Hi,

linked clones have some advantages:

• New virtual machines are rapidly deployed. The initial task is only to reference to a snapshot of an existing virtual machine. No virtual disk file(s) will be copied at this time.
• They save disk space. Because only the space difference to the origin snapshot is allocated.

I found no option in the vSphere respective the Webclient to create one, but PowerCli provides this. Lets do it.
Connect to vCenter

Connect-VIServer vcenter.subdomain.domain.local

Define the virtual machine which is the origin of the linked clone, and the Snapshotname on which the linked clone based.

$sOriginVM="mastervm"
$sOriginVMSnapshotName="mastervm_linkedclone_snap"

Continue reading VMware vSphere: Create a linked clone with Powercli →