How to convert ubuntu 20.04 physical machine to virtual machine in vmware

I cannot speak for vmware, I know my method worked on virtualbox, and there is probably a better way than what I use on that, but...

-Create a VM and boot into it with a live install/iso and "try without installing".

-you will need ssh installed on your source system

-In your live system, establish a network connection that can talk to the system with the source drive.

-In your live system locate your Target hard drive device, /dev/sdT, it should just be one device if you are to copy the entire source device.... If you have a specific partition then it will be up to you to organize that on the new layout... This example just assumes one entire device copy for explaining purposes...

-Inside the live system, you want to dd your Source drive onto your virtual hard drive device in your VM. ssh user@hostmachine "sudo -S dd if=/dev/sdS bs=4M" | dd of=/dev/sdT status=progress

-It will take a while. When it is done copying, if all goes well, you should be able to restart the VM and it should boot into your system.

Gotchyas:
-You may have to make adjustments on the virtual manager if UEFI is involved.
-You may have to disable or uninstall your graphics software, as it will be using the VM's drivers.
-You will have to rebuild the network interfaces, as they are config'd based on the MAC addresses. OR config your virtual manager with the same number of NICs your source system has and assigning it the existing MACs... AFTER YOU do the dd!

This is how I copied my ubuntu 18.04 off of my failing drive in my physical box INTO a .vdi in virtualbox.

And if all else fails... you could actually just do this with virtualbox. Get it running and config'd properly in virtualbox... and then convert it from virtualbox to vmware... I've converted virtualbox to kvm before and it worked pretty well.