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I am trying to clone a VHD between hosts, and somehow I can't recreate something I did last week. I have to use IP address for the destination as for some reason DNS isn't getting the HostName of these hosts, even though they are using DHCP to get an IP address and all the Windows clients do the same and manage to update DNS. That said... I THOUGHT this was the proper command, after CD to the source folder

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmdk [email protected]://vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME

I also tried it with a single forward slash after the IP, which I have also seen when searching, so

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmdk [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME

In both cases I get Failed to clone disk: The destination file system does not support large files (12) which my searching suggests is a bit of a misnomer, actually indicating I am getting my arguments wrong.

REALLY wishing I had copied the successful command to a reference document last week. Definitely WILL do that this week. :)

EDIT: Well, I am getting closer. I tried

scp /vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmdk [email protected]://vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME/VMNAME.vmdk

and it copes something, but it's a tiny destination file, not the actual 128GB VHD. Seems like I must be missing something in the SCP command.

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  • Why don't you clone through vCenter? Jun 27, 2022 at 6:42
  • @gerald-schneider I don't have vCenter. It's a minimalist ESXi setup for a limited use case. Even this exercise in cloning VMs from one host to another is a one time thing, to migrate from an IT supplied host that sucks, to a customer supplied host that actually works.
    – Gordon
    Jun 27, 2022 at 6:48

1 Answer 1

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vmkfstools -i is supposed to copy VM files within the host, it can't do that over ssh and is interpreting your URI as a device mapping. You should use vmkfstools to clone locally, then copy cloned files with scp, but performance may suffer.

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  • Interesting. I know last week it was a single command, but I updated the OP to show my attempt using SCP, which I had just found while searching. The thing is, I only get a tiny file at the destination, not the full VHD. Am I missing something in my SCP command above?
    – Gordon
    Jun 27, 2022 at 7:15
  • And when you say "performance may suffer", I assume you mean performance of hosted VMs during the transfer? In which case, nob worries as there is only the one VM, and the current host is basically useless, thus the need to move it to a new host.
    – Gordon
    Jun 27, 2022 at 7:17
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    You should scp entire VM directory, that is `scp -p -r /vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/datastore/VMNAME and by performance I mean scp data transfer rate will be slow compared to Vmotion using Vcenter. Jun 27, 2022 at 7:35
  • Ah, ok. Definitely different from what I remember from last week, but the goal is success, and learning something new is just added goodness. Does the destination VMNAME folder need to already exist, or not, or does it matter?
    – Gordon
    Jun 27, 2022 at 7:37
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    You can use source without trailing slash and specify just datastore with trailing slash as the destination, this way destination VM folder will be created automagically Jun 27, 2022 at 7:43

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