I have a VM that can be deleted, but I wanted to test being able to make a copy and put it back in vCenter/vSphere if needed. I've think I've figured out at least two ways to download it.
1. Browse to the datastore-->Select the VM folder-->right click-->click download.
2. vSphere-->File-->Export-->Export OVF Template
Are there any other ways and what are the pros and cons of each method?
Thank you in advance for helping me.
clone it, easiest, simplest, most efficient way. You can even do it online...
With option 1 you may run into disk space issues if the virtual disks are thin provisioned. Anyway, don't you have a backup application you can use? If not, there are several free backup applications (VeeamZIP, Unitrends, Trilead VMExplorer, ...) you could use.
André
As it has been already mentioned, your goal looks pretty much the exact use case that VeeamZIP was built for.
VeeamZIP is similar to full VM backup. Nevertheless, when you perform backup with VeeamZIP, there is no need to configure a backup job and schedule it; instead, the backup process for selected VMs can be started immediately. Minimum settings are required during this type of backup: backup destination, compression level and enabling or disabling application-aware image processing.
For more information regarding it kindly see the following article:
http://technodrone.blogspot.com/2012/06/something-awesome-from-veeam.html
Hope this helps.
Thanks.