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Monday, February 18, 2019

VMware Workstation Pro 15] 12. Cloning Virtual Machines

Hello, guys. You will figure out how to clone a virtual machine (VM) in this post. When you finish this practice, you will be able to save your time for preparing your test environment.

What is Clone?

In a virtualized environment, the clone is a copy of the virtual machine. To prepare a VM, a series of processes such as VM creating,  guest OS installing, and applications installing are required. This will take a considerable amount of time. If you need the same VM as a particular VM, you can clone it. After cloning, You only need to change some information such as IP address, hostname and so on. You can then create the same one in a short time.

Think simple. This is possible because the virtual machine is made up of files.


Cloning a Virtual Machine

What virtual machines can you clone? You can clone the virtual machines that are turned off normally. And also from the snapshots taken at turned off.

The target to clone is considered the parent virtual machine. There are two ways to clone virtual machines. One is Linked Clones, another is Full Clones. Linked Clones remain in relationship with the parent virtual machine after cloning. This affects the clone virtual machine when there is a problem with the parent virtual machine.


A full clone is an independent copy from the parent after cloning. I recommend cloning from snapshots.

Creating a Linked Clone

Select VM > Manage > Clone from VMware Workstation menu for cloning the current state in the virtual machine. When the Clone Virtual Machine Wizard window appears, select the current state in the virtual machine and click the Next button.


For Clone type, select Create a linked clone and click the Next button. Then enter the virtual machine name. When you press the Finish button, the clone is run.


Remember the shape of the Linked Clone icon. And be careful when removing virtual machines.


After cloning, select the parent virtual machine and click the Snapshot Manager icon. You will then be able to see the relationship with the linked clone virtual machine.



Creating a Full Clone

You can select Create a full clone for the Full Clone. Look carefully at the appearance of the cloned virtual machine icon. You can see that the shape of the icon is different from the Linked Clone.



You have acquired the skill to clone virtual machines. I encourage you to practice a few more times to become proficient. Save your valuable time by using the clone feature. See you next. Thank you.



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