A cloned server is, for most purposes, an exact copy of the source.
This facilitates collaboration: for example, a support team can reproduce a bug in a virtual machine, and an engineer can quickly make a linked clone of that virtual machine to work on the bug. Leave a Comment on How to Clone and Sysprep (generalize ) a Windows Server running on VMware Workstation Cloning a server takes an exact copy of an existing machine. For our purposes, we will be using the Windows 2012 R2 180 Trial ISO which is. The first thing we need to do is build our 'golden master' VM.
When the cloning operation is complete, the clone is a separate virtual machine though it may share virtual disks with the parent virtual machine: see Full and Linked Clones ).
The existing virtual machine is called the parent of the clone. This HOWTO describes the fastest way I’ve figured out thus far to deploy net-new Windows 2012 VMs using VMware Workstation for a Lab environment. A clone is a copy of an existing virtual machine. You can also easily share a virtual machine with other users by storing the virtual machine on your local network, where other users can quickly make a linked clone. HOWTO: Automate Deployment of VMware Workstation VMs. Linked clones are created swiftly, so you can easily create a unique virtual machine for each task you have. See Linked Clones and Access to the Parent Virtual Machine Without access to the parent, a linked clone is disabled. Ongoing changes to the virtual disk of the parent do not affect the linked clone, and changes to the disk of the linked clone do not affect the parent.Ī linked clone must access the parent. (See Understanding Snapshots.) All files available on the parent at the moment of the snapshot continue to remain available to the linked clone.
Creating a full clone can take several minutes if the files involved are large.Ī linked clone is made from a snapshot of the parent. However, full clones take longer to create than linked clones. Because a full clone does not share virtual disks with the parent virtual machine, full clones generally perform better than linked clones. This conserves disk space, and allows multiple virtual machines to use the same software installation.Ī full clone is an independent virtual machine, with no need to access or maintain an ongoing connection to the parent virtual machine. A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine in an ongoing manner.