Today, my boss told me we need to move 2 virtual machines from vCenter 6.7 to vCenter 7. And we need to move 1 virtual machine from vCenter 7 to vCenter 6.7. VMware has a solution for these scenarios.

Now, for vSphere 7.0 Update 3, the feature is further enhanced to support bulk clone operation! In addition, there are some quality improvements such as a new enhanced vCenter Server connection form and a new icon.

Prerequisites

1. Obtain the credentials for the administrator account of the vCenter Server instance from which you want to import or clone virtual machines.
2. Verify that the source vCenter Server instances are version 6.5 or later.
3. Verify that the target vCenter Server instance is version 7.0 Update 1c or later if you want to import virtual machines to another vCenter Server instance.
4. Verify that the target vCenter Server instance is version 7.0 Update 3 if you want to clone virtual machines to another vCenter Server instance.

Scenario1:

Import Workflow:

In order to clone several virtual workloads from another vCenter Server to the current one, right-click on the destination host/cluster and select the “Import VMs” action.

After that, enter the credentials of the source vCenter Server in the import connection form.

On the next screen, select the workloads that should be cloned.

When you complete the wizard, the workloads will be cloned to the destination vCenter Server.

Scenario2:

Export Workflow:

Select the virtual workloads that should be cloned to a foreign vCenter Server and click on “Migrate…”

On the next screen, make sure to select “Cross vCenter Server export” option.

Then, select the destination vCenter Server and, when you complete the wizard, all workloads will be cloned there.

With the enhancements to the XVM in vSphere 7.0 Update 3, users are able to perform a bulk workload clone operation between different vCenter Servers. This makes the feature more versatile and suits a variety of use cases, some of which are:

1. Migrating/cloning VMs from an on-premise to a cloud (VMware Cloud) environment
2. Quicker adoption of the new vSphere versions by migrating/cloning the workloads from the old vCenter Server

For a more detailed information of the usage and requirements, please see the official documentation.

Finish 🙂