I have the following problem: There two separate vCenters (ESXi). They cannot see each other or communicate in any way. I can create a Clone of a VM in vCenter1 but then I want to move that Clone in vCenter2. Is there a way that I can copy the Cloned VM (files) on an external HDD and move them in the other vCenter?
7 Answers
If you'd like to do this using the command line, you can do this if you have ESXi 6.0 (or possibly even ESXi 5.5) running, by using govc, which is a very helpful utility for interacting with both your vCenter and its associated resources.
Depending on your setup, you can
# setup your credentials
export GOVC_USERNAME=YOUR_USERNAME GOVC_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASSWORD
govc export.ovf -u your-vcsa-url.example.com -vm VM_NAME -dc VMS_DATACENTER export-folder
Then, you'll have your VM VM_NAME exported in the folder export-folder. From there, you can then
govc import.ovf -u your-other-vcsa-url.example.com -vm NEW_VM_NAME -dc NEW_DATACENTER export-folder/VM_NAME.ovf
That'll import it into your other vCenter. You might have to specify -ds NEW_DATASTORE too, if you have more than one datastore available, but govc will tell you so if you need to.
The commands above require that govc is installed, which you should, because it's far better than ovftool either way.
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