Sunday, March 1, 2015

Moving vs. Copying VMWare VMs

There seems to be a great deal of confusion regarding what it means to "move" or "copy" VMWare VMs.

When you are copying over Template VMs and you also copy over the corresponding VMX file, you may get a prompt similar to the following:






Well, when you select the option "I Moved It", VMWare essentially keeps all of the information related to the VM including the originally assigned Network MAC Address.


Of course, if you are assigning or managing Network IP Addresses by MAC Address, this can be problematic with IP Address assignment if your actual intention was to use the VM as another copy.

However, if you choose "I Copied It", VMWare will assign a new MAC Address to the Network Adapter, thus avoiding any IP Address conflicts on the network.


This seems to be the only major identifiable change that VMWare makes in regards to the VM by choosing either option.

The Windows Machine SID does not appear to change regardless of the option that is chosen:






In addition, the Windows Activation state also appears to remain intact:



Here are also a few good articles on understanding the differences between the 2:

https://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_move_uuid_moving_virtual_machines.html

http://techhead.co/vmware-esx-i-moved-it-or-i-copied-it-whats-the-difference/


So there you have it!!  Now you know the difference between "Moving" and "Copying" VMWare VMs!!







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