Copy a VM in ESXi all versions without vCenter 

Thanks for Watching! I hoped this video helped.

if you are using static IPs, don’t forget to change the cloned vm’s IP before you start the original one

Thank you for making this. It truly helped.

How to copy from 1 ESXi host to another?

Good explanation of the process.

You cannot change the disk size of the copied vmdisk, if it's thin provision, it will be a few GB, so you will need to add another disk.

thank you i hope if you can tell us more about networking

if you want to copy it to external SSD for safe keeping, so I have to add the external SSD as a new datastore and do this, if so how do I then disconnect that datastore and keep that SSD in a safe place? When it comes to restoring it, can I import a Datastore as is with its content? -- Thanks

In the esxi 6.5.0, *.vmdk is the Disk DescriptorFile! File sys is *-flat.vmdk

How do i copy a running VM without vcenter or vsphere?

having to shut the VM down first could be a dealbreaker for many. Oh well. I have vsphere but VMs with large disks can take forever to transfer clones from ESXi hosts in one part of the world to the other 😢

tks dude!

I tried this and it tells me that it could not lock the file

I’m fairly sure anyone that got this far knows how to copy and paste a file in a UI. That’s also not cloning. Why not export then create clones from the template? Or rsync? Or any of the countless scripts on GitHub?

Thanks You👍

nipo tayar