The Clone Virtual Machine wizard guides you through the process of cloning a virtual machine. You do not need to locate and manually copy the parent virtual machine files.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarize yourself with the different types of clones. See Using Full Clones and Using Linked Clones.
  • Run a defragmentation utility in the guest operating system to defragment the drives on the parent virtual machine.
  • If the parent virtual machine is a Workstation 4.x and Workstation 4.x-compatible virtual machine, upgrade it to Workstation 5.x or later.
  • If you are creating a linked clone, enable template mode for the parent virtual machine. See Enable Template Mode for a Parent Virtual Machine of Linked Clones.
  • Power off the parent virtual machine.

Procedure

  1. Select the parent virtual machine and select VM > Manage > Clone.
  2. Select the state of the parent from which you want to create a clone.

    You can create a clone from the current state of the parent virtual machine or from an existing snapshot. If you select the current state, Workstation Pro creates a snapshot of the parent virtual machine before cloning it.

    Note: You cannot clone from the current state if template mode is enabled for the parent virtual machine.
  3. Specify whether to create a linked clone or a full clone.
  4. Type a name and a location for the cloned virtual machine.
  5. Click Finish to create the clone and Close to exit the wizard.
    A full clone can take several minutes to create, depending on the size of the virtual disk that is being duplicated.
  6. If the parent virtual machine uses a static IP address, change the static IP address of the clone before the clone connects to the network to prevent IP address conflicts.
    Although the wizard creates a new MAC address and UUID for the clone, other configuration information, such as the virtual machine name and static IP address configuration, is identical to that of the parent virtual machine.

Results

The summary view for a linked clone shows the path to the virtual machine configuration ( .vmx) file of the parent virtual machine.