Adding Copy and Paste Functions to vSphere VMs or in vCenter

By default, being able to copy and paste items from your machine through the console of a VM is disabled. This makes sense, there are security implications here. However, if you’re in an environment where you trust your users and you’re constantly moving files or managing VMs, having the ability to copy and paste is huge. So here’s how to enable it:

To enable Copy & Paste on one machine

1. Log in to a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Client and power off the virtual machine.
2. Select the virtual machine and click the Summary tab.
3. Click Edit Settings.
4. Navigate to Options > Advanced > General and click Configuration Parameters.
5. Click Add Row.
6. Type these values in the Name and Value columns:
   

   Name	Value
   isolation.tools.copy.disable	FALSE
   isolation.tools.paste.disable	FALSE

To enable Copy & Paste for all machines on a server

To enable Copy and Paste option for all the virtual machines in the ESXi/ESX host:

1. Log in to the ESX/ESXi host as a root user.
2. Take a backup of the /etc/vmware/config file.
3. Open the /etc/vmware/config file using a text editor.
4. Add these entries to the file:

   vmx.fullpath = “/bin/vmx”
   isolation.tools.copy.disable="FALSE"
isolation.tools.paste.disable="FALSE"

Special note: You’ll have to restart the entire virtual machine to get these settings to apply. You will not be able to just reboot the guest.

That should be it. Hope this helps!

Cheers