VMware VCENTER CONVERTER EN-000158-02 - Manual (Page 17)

Disk-Based Cloning
Converter Standalone supports disk-based cloning to import existing virtual machines.
Disk-based cloning transfers all sectors from all disks and preserves all volume metadata. The destination
virtual machine receives the same volumes, of the same type as the volumes of the source virtual machine.
Disk-based cloning supports all types of basic and dynamic disks.
Full and Linked Clones
Clones can be full or linked according to the amount of data copied from the source to the destination machine.
A full clone is an independent copy of a virtual machine that shares nothing with the parent virtual machine
after the cloning operation. Ongoing operation of a full clone is separate from the parent virtual machine.
Because a full clone does not share virtual disks with the parent virtual machine, full clones generally perform
better than linked clones. Full clones take longer to create than linked clones. Creating a full clone can take
several minutes if the files involved are large.
You can create a full clone by using any disk clone mode other than the linked clone mode.
A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine in an
ongoing manner. A linked clone is a fast way to convert and run a new virtual machine. You can create a linked
clone from the current state, or snapshot, of a powered-off virtual machine. This practice conserves disk space
and allows multiple virtual machines to use the same software installation.
All files available on the source machine 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 source machine. If you make changes to a source Virtual PC and
Virtual Server machines, or to LiveState images, the linked clone is corrupted and you cannot use it anymore.
A linked clone must have access to the source. Without access to the source, you cannot use a linked clone at
all.
To quickly convert a virtual machine, create a linked clone. See
“Create a Linked Clone,” on page 53.
Migrating Existing Virtual Machines and System Images
You can move virtual machines between hosted products and managed products. A hosted product runs as
an application on physical machines with an operating system. A managed product is a bare-metal VMware
product that provides a thin software layer (the hypervisor) that enables it to run directly on the physical
machine.
Converting virtual
machines You can move VMware virtual machines between Workstation,
VMware Player, VMware ACE, VMware Fusion, ESX, ESXi Embedded,
ESXi Installable, and VMware Server. You can also import virtual machines
from Microsoft Virtual Server and Virtual PC.
Configuring virtual
machines For VMware virtual machines with disks set up by restoration from a backup
of a physical host or by some other direct means of copying, Converter
Standalone prepares the image to run on VMware virtual hardware. If you used
a third-party virtualization software to create a virtual machine on an ESX host,
Chapter 1 Introduction
VMware, Inc. 17