CODEWITHSUNDEEP
virtual-machinesnapshotesxi
chuacw
chuacw

Reputation: 1863

Multiple ESXi VMs with same base

I'm trying to create multiple VMs in ESXi with the same base, to conserve space.

For example, I'd like to create a base VM, with Windows 2008 and SQL 2008. Then I'll want VM 1 to install software-1 and VM 2 to install software-2.

Assuming the base VM is 10GB, and I have 2 VMs based off that, my savings are 20GB. If I have 4 VMs based off the base VM, the savings would be 40GB.

It'll be a bonus if I can also update the base VM, and have the changes propagate to the other 2 (or 4) VMs.

I've done some googling on base VM, snapshot, etc, but I'm unable to find how to do this, probably due to the wrong terminology being used.

Does anyone know how I can achieve the above, either via GUI or by command line?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 145

Answers (1)

Kir Chou
Kir Chou

Reputation: 3080

In my experience, the scenario can't be done by ESXi. We do snapshots for backup (of course, saving space) but not for seed.

The scenario may be termed SANDBOX. There is an famous open source solution linuxcontainer (lxc)

LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.

If you want to do that on ESXi, the only way I thought is clone machine. (without saving space and time efficiency). And every time the seed machine update, you need to delete and clone again.

=> SEED ---> clone machine A  ---> delete   +---> NEW SEED ---> ...
    |    |                                  | 
    |    +-> clone machine B  ---> delete   |
    |                                       |
    +----------------------------- update --+

Upvotes: 0

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