Managing VMware Linked Clones

This chapter contains the following sections:

About VMware Linked Clones

A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that continually shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine. This conserves disk space, and allows multiple virtual machines to use the same software installation.

A linked clone is made from a snapshot of the parent. All files available on the parent at the moment of the snapshot continue to remain available to the linked clone. 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. A linked clone must have access to the parent. Without access to the parent, a linked clone is disabled.

For more information on managing VM snapshots, see the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide and the Cisco UCS Director End User Portal Guide.

The following scenarios apply for linked clone functionality:

  • If a VM remains out of all the VMs being deleted from linked clone VMs, then all the VMs are brought back to the original size of the parent VM.

  • If a VM is migrated to some other host and datastore, it retains the original size of the parent VM.

Using VMware Linked Clones in Cisco UCS Director

Before you begin

Before you clone a VM you must note the following:

  • During storage policy creation, if you chose to use linked clones (by checking the Use Linked Clone check box), the clone will be a linked clone. However, if you did not check the box, the clone will be a full clone.

  • During resource allocation, only those hosts that have access to the parent's images or the VM's datastores are selected as linked clones.

  • You must create a new snapshot or use an existing snapshot to create the linked clone.


Note

If you are creating a Standard Catalog item on the VMware vSphere Cloud using the linked clone feature, the selected VM template image must have a snapshot. If it does not have a snapshot, you need to create a new snapshot on the VM before converting it into a VM template image, and perform an inventory to sync Cisco UCS Director with vCenter.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose Virtual > Compute.

Step 2

On the Compute page, click VMs.

Step 3

Click the row with the VM for which you want to use linked clone functionality.

Step 4

From the More Actions drop-down list, choose Clone.

Step 5

On the Clone VM screen, complete the fields to create the linked clone from an existing snapshot or a new snapshot.

Step 6

On the Customization Options screen, complete the fields including the following:

  1. Check the Provision all disks in single datastore check box to provision all disks in a single datastore.

    Note

     

    The scope is the same as the system disk scope.

  2. Choose the VM Application Charge Frequency, which can be hourly or monthly.

Step 7

Click Next.

Step 8

On the Deployment Configuration screen, complete the fields to choose where to deploy the VM, to choose to perform provisioning now or later, and to determine how long to keep the deployed VMs running.

Step 9

Click Next.

Step 10

On the Custom Specification screen, complete the fields for custom CPU and memory parameters, if applicable.

Step 11

Click Next.

Step 12

On the Custom Workflow screen, click Next.

Step 13

On the Select Datastores screen, choose the VM disk to which you want to assign the datastores.

Step 14

Click Next.

Step 15

On the Select VM Networks screen, choose the VM network.

Step 16

Click Next.

Step 17

On the Summary screen, review the information and click Submit.

Viewing Linked Clone VMs Reports

Procedure

Step 1

Choose Virtual > Compute.

Step 2

On the Compute page, choose the cloud.

Step 3

On the Compute page, click Images.

Step 4

Click the row with the image for which you want to view the linked clone VMs report.

Step 5

Click View Details.

Step 6

Click Linked Clone VMs.

You can view a report of all the linked clone VMs for each snapshot.