Cloning entire ESXi Host

[omadmin]

Has anyone clone an entire ESXi Host as a backup? For example, I currently have a bare metal host (HP Z2 G9) with VMware ESXi 7.0U3 and I wanted to clone the entire VMware ESXi host to another similar bare metal host.

Is this possible? We've attempted to use Clonezilla but no dice. We are trying to find an easier and efficient way to doing this.

Any help from the community is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Lalegre · Accepted solution]

@omadmin,

Cloning an ESXI is not a supported method at all, what you should do is backing up the configuration and restore in case you need it: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2042141. 

Also, if you are trying to do this for configuring the same on the new host, I recommend you to use Host Profiles if you have the licenses to do so.

[omadmin]

Thank you for your help on this.

[omadmin]

Update to all who are curious. This is what I did to clone an entire ESXI host from one bare metal host to another. (This was through a ESXi stand-alone environment/no cloud environment)

PRELIMINARY:

a. Before doing anything, export all VMs from old host and store in local storage where it can be easily uploaded on the new host.

b. Make sure the new host hardware specs (RAM, Storage, CPU) are the same or better than the old host.

STEPS:

1. On new host, install the ISO image and assign a static IP address on the same network as the old host. Use a different IP address than the old host.
2. Once able to log into the VMware ESXi web browser on new hosts, immediately update the host (version must match with old host). The ISO image doesn't contain the updated version of the VMWare ESXi.
3. Backup old host configuration and upload old host configuration in accordance with https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2042141.
4. New host should start up with old host configuration (Be advised that it will also carry the IP address so if BOTH hosts are up simultaneously there will be an IP address conflict. Make sure the old host is off. Network configurations, hostname, and changes that were done on the old ESXi should reflect on the new host. NOTE: After the migration of the configuration to the new host, when I started the new host, it was the exact replica of the old host. I had to change the IP address and hostname to avoid the IP address conflict.
5. Upload all VMs from local storage to new host.
6. Test new host and make sure everything runs properly.