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How to Clone a VM in vSphere

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Michael M.
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Cloning a VM creates a copy of the source VM. In this article, we will explain how to clone a VM in the vSphere Web Client.

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  • Cloning a VM in vSphere

Cloning a VM in vSphere

From the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the Hosts and Clusters tab. Right-click on the VM to be cloned and then select Clone and Clone to Virtual Machine... from the drop-down menu.

clonevm01.png

In the ensuing menu, select a name for your VM and choose its location in your file tree.

clonevm02.png

Next, specify the cluster, host, vApp, or resource pool for this VM.

clonevm03.png

Set the storage location (disk space) for this VM.

The virtual disk type is on “Thin Provision”, which means that a virtual disk will be created that only uses the actual disk space used on the storage, regardless of the disk space previously used on the source VM.

To learn more about disk types, please check out our VMware Disk Types for Virtual Machines article.

In the "VM Storage Policy" row, you will be able to choose the default policy for datastores, a custom policy if you have vSAN hosts, or the VM encryption option.

clonevm04.png

Next, we will select the network configurations for the VM we are cloning.

  • If you do not check anything, this will make no changes to the clone VM's network configurations compared to the source.
  • Customize this virtual machine's hardware: This option allows you to specify the new configurations you want to implement on this VM.

clonevm05.png

Warning: If you did not customize the VM, you will need to change the clone configuration before you boot it up to avoid an IP/MAC conflict. To do so, uncheck the network adapter in the VM settings once it has been cloned.

clonevm06.png

Conclusion

Having read this article, you should be able to clone your VMs from the vSphere Web Client.

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