Enterprise Software Development

How To Copy / Clone a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

You can create a copy or clone of an existing virtual machine (VM) quite easily in Hyper-V … The process is a little different than you might think though. The basic procedure is to export and import a virtual machine. I use my VM’s primarily for separate development sandboxes and test machines, so here’s the steps I used:

1. Sysprep the guest VM (for windows machines)
2. Shut down the guest
3. Rename the VM to “Dev Ws - Base” (in Hyper-V Manager)
4. Hyper-V Export Virtual Machine
5. Rename the original VM back to the original name
6. Make a copy of the exported directory in windows explorer (optional if you want more than one copy) (i used robocopy from an administrator command prompt [robocopy /s "Dev Ws - Base" "Dev Ws - SplendidCRM"])
7. Import the one of the directories
8. Rename the new VM to your new VM name, in my case it was “Dev Ws - DotNetNuke”

Now you should have multiple copies of your original VM. Check out Microsoft Windows Server 2008: Implementation and Administration for more information on Hyper-V!

Oh and if you want to move the exported folder for any reason before you re-import it, you might need to stop the Hyper-V service, other wise you may get a “destination folder access denied” error box.

If you want a scripted solution to this (like to make lets say 10 machines) check out this post.