[ TIP OF THE DAY ] How to Clone a Virtual Machine (VM).

How to Clone a Virtual Machine (VM) without VMware vCenter?

1. SSH to the ESXi host

2. Identify the path of the source 

(say, /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/SourceVM/ where sourceVM is the name of the source VM)

3. Create a new folder in the desired datastore

 mkdir /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/DesintationVM  

where Destination VM is the name of the new VM.

4. Clone the source VM vmdk to the newly created folder Destination VM

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/SourceVM/sourceVM.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/DesintationVM/DesintationVM.vmdk

5. Once cloning is completed, proceed with the creation of the new VM using vSphere client

6. In the option where you need to provision the harddisk for the new VM, choose 'Use an existing virtual disk'

7. Browse and point the newly cloned vmdk file