Esxi 5 clone to template

If it's a windows server virtual machine and you are planning them to be a domain member, the server SID would still be the same, which will cause problems. Other than that, any of these methods will do the job.

Just choose the one more convenient for you. I don't have a free ESX host to play with at the moment - can you right-click a powered-off Vm, select Template, and then Convert to Template?

You can create a a "poor-man's template" with the free ESXi by cloning an existing vmdk from the command line. Then when you want to make a new VM based on this, SSH into the hypervisor, navigate to the datastore, locate the template, and use vmkfstools to clone it to a new folder. Give the new machine the same name you used for the folder, and when prompted for the disk, tell it to use an existing VHD and point it at the copy you created.

The nice thing about this is it requires no external storage or third-party tools, is very fast, and works even on old versions of ESXi without the datastore browser. You can adjust the disk format using the -d parameter, or perform various other tasks with this tool. I am taking the clone from a snapshot. Not sure what to do.

Any ideas? Well, I wrote too soon. Thanks for the instructions. Other than this little hick-up, it all went perfectly. Thanks, again. That is interesting. I think it is working fine. Thanks for the blog post. Thanks for this post. Q: what happens to the source VM?

Templates are best suited for production environments where you want the mass deployment of Virtual Machines along with the installed OS, basic software, and configured settings such as the security policy of your organization, as a base VM.

Once a template is deployed, you can install software depending on the role of the server for example IIS or Database. You can convert the template back to Virtual Machine to update the base template with the latest released patches and updates and to install or upgrade any software and again convert back to the template to be used for future deployment of Virtual Machines with the latest patches.

You can customize the guest operating system of the clone to change the Virtual Machine name, network settings, and other properties. To continue this discussion, please ask a new question. Get answers from your peers along with millions of IT pros who visit Spiceworks. Hi All, I am in the process of building a small virtual environment and have deployed vsphere 5 hypervisor the free version with the essentials pack. I cant seem to find anyway of doing this, any help will be greatly appreciated.

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