In this article, we will look at how to copy VMware VMs directly between ESXi hosts using the OVF Tool. Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an industry standard for describing metadata about virtual machine images in XML format. The VMware OVF Tool is available for many platforms, including Windows, Linux, and MAC OSX. The OVF Tool provides a lot of features, such as importing and exporting OVFs, converting between any VMware-supported format (VMX, OVF, OVA, vCloud Director, etc.), signing OVF packages, and validating OVF package signatures-and many more. In the case of standalone ESXi hosts, you could copy VMs between ESXi hosts by leveraging some of the tools, like VMware Converter, or you could even export the virtual machine to the jump host Windows system and then import the same into the destination host, but all this would take a while and you are dependent on a middle-man system for the VMware Converter installation or during import and export.Īnother option is the OVF Tool. So rules can be assigned to send different images to different hosts based on their MAC. But what if you don't have a vCenter server but only standalone ESXi hosts? How can you move or copy VMs between ESXi hosts when you have standalone ESXi hosts that are not managed by vCenter servers? From the course: VMware vSphere 6.5 Deploying VMs and Hosts. If playback doesnt begin shortly, try restarting your device. Similarly, copying a VM or a VM template between ESXi hosts is very simple when you have the vCenter server-you can simply clone the VM to the target ESXi host or even deploy a VM from VM templates wherever you want in the vCenter server. How to clone or copy a VM on free ESXi 6.5 or 6.7 without using vCenter.
This migration is possible when you have a vCenter server and both source and target ESXi hosts are managed by the vCenter Server.