Snapshots and linked clones

A snapshot saves a point-in-time state of a given virtual machine. Changes beyond the snapshot of the point-in-time state are written to a delta disk while the original virtual disk (.vmdk) is marked as read-only. This preserves the point-in-time state of the virtual machine until the snapshot is deleted by an administrator. Multiple snapshots of a given virtual machine can be taken, and it is these point-in-time snapshots that are used as the basis for View Composer linked clones.

A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine based on a specific snapshot of that virtual machine (known as the parent). When a linked clone pool is created, View Composer creates a replica.

A replica is the original read-only base virtual ...

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