Clone VMWare Fusion Virtual Machines
This is a quick and dirty how-to on cloning VMWare Fusion virtual machines on Mac OS X.
1. Open Terminal App (Applications -> Utilities)
2. Go to where you stored your Virtual Machines by either typing the path or simply dragging and dropping your folder from the finder on to the terminal window. This will insert the path to the folder into your terminal.
cd /path/to/virtual-machines [ENTER]
3. Now simply copy the VMWare Fusion virtual machine using this command (no need to be root for this!)
cp -rvp Virtual-Machine.vmwarevm Cloned-VM.vmwarevm [ENTER]
Option -r will tell the cp (copy) app to copy folders (recursive)
Option -v tells cp to output information while it’s at work (verbose)
Option -p will keep existing file/folder permissions (preserve)
Remember that although the VMWare Fusion virtual machine appears to be a single file in the finder, it is in fact a folder containing everything VMWare Fusion needs to run the machine! Depending on how large your image is, it may take some time (hence we use the verbose option to let us know what it’s doing).
4. Drag the new virtual machine image from the finder window into the VMWare Fusion machine list and choose “Settings”. Note that VMWare Fusion will revert the name back to the original name of your cloned image!
5. In “Settings” simply click onto the name of the clone and change it to something of your choice.
6. Start the clone and VMWare Fusion will ask you whether it was moved or copied, select the latter (copied) and continue as normal. This question will only occur once.
7. Relax, enjoy and remember to share this info 
Dirk says:
November 5th, 2009 at 18:31
Nice article, thanks for publishing it. I have a question about snapshots: the same snapshots that were associated with the original are still associated with the clone, which is both a blessing and a curse. Is there any way that you know of to disassociate the snapshots from the clone without deleting them from the original?
Rick says:
February 17th, 2010 at 02:00
I would love to know as well. I had to delete all my snapshots.
Eric Novikoff says:
May 22nd, 2010 at 01:17
I have done this copy/clone operation but moved the clone to my laptop. All was well for a while, then Win7 complained that the hardware had changed, and stopped working without a new license. I’m fine with getting another license, but the problem is that i want to only maintain one windows environment with all of its installed applications, settings, etc. By having to relicense Windows, I am changing the copy, which means that I can no longer maintain just one VM image. Is there any way around this?
Stephen says:
June 18th, 2010 at 22:42
@Eric – If you choose “moved” when moving the vm to a new host, it *may* be fine. For the copied option, vmware products change the MAC address of the vm to avoid collisions, which is one of the things WinLicensing looks at. (Note: have not yet tested.)
Paul Tremblett says:
July 31st, 2010 at 15:55
I have used your procedure in the past with great success. When I try it now using the latest version of VMF, it seems that the eth0 network interface (Ubuntu VM) disappears in the clone. I have tried using the advanced options to generate a new MAC for the clone but with no luck.