Cloning a VM Using VMware vSphere Client

                VMware vSphere is the most robust virtualization solution. Cloning a Virtual Machine in ESxi 5.x is a feature of vCenter server. Out of the box vSphere free edition hypervisor does not support cloning. But there is an alternative way to clone a VM.

1. First connect to the ESXi using the vSphere client and power off the source VM.
2. In vSphere client User Interface.Select the Configuration tab and Storage settings on the left menu. The Datastores list will come up on the right pane.

     3. Right click on the datastore of the source VM and select Browse.

     4. Right click on the root folder on the left tree and Create a new folder.

     5. Select the source folder of the VM,which one we want to clone

     6  Copy the configuration file (.vmx) and the virtual disk file (.vmdk)

 7. Paste the copied files into the destination folder,new folder

 8. In the destination folder select .vmx file and Add to Inventory.

 9. Enter the name of the cloned VM and finish the wizard.