Administration Guide › Managing Virtual Environments › VMware vSphere and vCenter Server › VMware vCenter Provisioning and Common Use Cases › Clone a Virtual Machine

Clone a Virtual Machine

Cloning a virtual machine creates a copy of the virtual machine that you can place anywhere in the same virtual machine farm. You can also customize the guest operating system when creating a clone. You can only clone a virtual machine when it is in the powered off state.

To clone a virtual machine

1. Open the Explore pane.

   Available groups, services, and systems appear.

2. Find and right-click the virtual machine to clone on the Explore pane and select Management, Cloning.

   The Cloning pane appears.

3. Complete the following fields and click Clone:

   Name

   Specifies the VM clone name.

   Datastore

   Specifies the datastore under which to store the cloned VM. The datastore must be in the same farm as the source VM.

   Custom Spec

   Specifies the guest operating system specification to use. You can select the default or a customization.

   Destination Resource Pool

   Specifies the pool from which the cloned VM obtains resources.

   A message appears confirming the request submission.

4. Click the Summary tab for the virtual machine.

   Verify that an event appears to confirm the operation. The clone appears in the Explore pane after the operation completes.