I know, you’re asking why would anyone want to do this? Well the answer is that the version I have to work with (VMWare ESX 3.0.2 Starter Edition) does not include support for cloning VMs!!!

Firstly you need to read the excellent notes posted by Mario at http://www.mariospina.com/braindump/ on cloning VMWare ESX 3.0.1 by hand. In addition to the steps that Mario lists in his notes, I found that:

  1. I could not rename the *flat.vmdk as there was some binary reference to it.
  2. You must recreate the ethernet connection otherwise you will have multiple VMs with duplicate mac addresses (obviously you also need to change the ip address of the VM as well).
  3. I had to change the vm machine id VMId in the .vmxf file so that it was unique amongst all the VMs. I guess this could eventually come back to bite me if/when VMWare creates a VM with the same VMId!!

I should also add that these instructions seem to work OK on VMWare ESX 3.0.2.