Copying a Virtual Machine
Matthew Portnoy · 2023
Creating a new virtual machine is often no more complicated than making a file copy and entering some configuration changes. Templates allow system administrators to create standard images of virtual machines that can be stamped out at will. This chapter discusses three topics: cloning a virtual machine, working with templates, and saving a virtual machine state. There is a slight difference between cloning a virtual machine and creating one from a template. In cloning, a virtual machine rather than a template is the source, although that is not necessarily a hard and fast rule. Virtual machines, by the nature of their composition as data files, often allow simpler methods of backup than their physical counterparts. Snapshot is a method to capture a virtual machine's hardware and software configuration like the copy mechanisms cloning and templating, but it also preserves the virtual machine's processing state.