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msenior7
Contributor
Contributor

Quickest Way to Copy VM

What's the quickest way to copy a VM? We tried copying a 50 GB VM and it took over 2 hours.

I'm thinking the quickest way would be either clone or snapshot.

Any input is appreciated.

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4 Replies
daphnissov
Immortal
Immortal

Clone it from the existing VM in vCenter.

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sandu
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Power off and clone the VM. That is the quickest.

Snapshot does not copy VM. It will just capture the state of VM so that you can revert to that state later if required.

Thank you,

Sandeep

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

  • Export the VM as an OVF file, move to a local system, then reimport the OVF to your ESXi destination.
  • Use vSphere and perform a host/storage migration.
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depping
Leadership
Leadership

depends on how your copying it and from what to what? If it is from LUN to LUN and you need to move it within the cluster then SvMotion is the fastest as it typically will leverage the array for the copy. Same with a clone, unless you need to move between arrays or from an array to NFS. then offload won't work and the above suggestions are better.

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