I have created a test environment where my vSwitch is not connected to any NIC adapters. I need to be able to copy files and folders to the VM to install applications. There is not functionality to allow me to copy and paste the files/folder unto a VM directly. I wish I could copy the files to datastore and copy it to VM from the datastore but that is not possible either.
My solution: create iso from files/folders, copy to datastore and connect to CD/DVD image datastore on the vm where you are copying the files OR Mount them from your local disk. Windows does not have native tool to convert files/folder to ISO. I used ISO Creator https://sourceforge.net/projects/iso-creator-cs/.
1. You can select the files/folders that you want to include in the ISO file as show below using ISO Creator.
2. Upload the ISO to the datastore.
3. Mount an ISO to the CD/DVD drive of the VM: Used for loading the initial OS or installing other software.
- Under the VM Hardware section, click the CD/DVD drive 1 drop down.
- Choose Connect to CD/DVD image on datastore.
- Locate and select your .ISO file, then click Open.