You select a snapshot from a master image.
Horizon creates a template VM that boots from the master snapshot. After some prep, the template VM shuts down and creates a new snapshot.
The template snapshot is copied to a Replica VM on every LUN (datastore) that will host RDS Farm VMs.
For each datastore, Horizon creates a Parent VM on every host in the cluster. This parent VM is powered on and running at all times.
The linked clones can finally be created by forking the parent VM to new linked clone VMs. Notes:
Once the Parent VMs are created, creating/recreating linked clones is fast. But it takes time to create all of the Parent VMs.
And the Parent VMs consume RAM on every host. If you have multiple datastores and/or multiple pools, then there are multiple Parent VMs per host, all of them consuming RAM.
You can schedule a periodic reboot of the Instant Clones, which causes the Instant Clone machines to refresh (revert) from the parent VM.
Instant Clones require Distributed vSwitch and Distributed Port Group with Static Binding and Fixed Allocation. Standard vSwitch is not supported. alaskasworld.com
