Hi Andre,
I understand your point now. I can certainly proceed in the direction that you have recommended, but since this will be the first time that I have ever done the steps that you recommended below, I do have some followup questions:
"Once the virtual disks are cloned successfully, create a new sub-directory and move the "old" .vmdk file to this sub-directory"
This vcenter server has three drives, and two snapshots (000001 and 000002). Do I move all of the old .vmdk files from all of the files (original VM plus two snapshots) to the sub-directory, leaving only the three new drives that I created and their VMDK files?
"..., then rename the newly create .vmdk files back to their original names using the vmkfstools -E <source.vmdk> <destination.vmdk> command (ensure you enter an upper-case "-E"). "
By "original name", I assume that you mean the original name for the original VM (not the snapshot) (i.e. vcenter.vmdk, vcenter_1.vmdk and vcenter_2.vmdk)?
Also...I am fortunate enough to have plenty of disk space. Does it make sense for me to create a temporary directory on the storage and copy all current file contents from the server into that temporary location for backup (just in case)? I am assuming that if all blows up, I could just copy all of these files back into the server folder?
jeff