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16 PS Series Template Volumes and Thin Clones: How and When to Use Them | TR1063
Note: Multiple snapshots can be mounted at once, however, this involves setting an advanced ESXi
configuration setting that is now deprecated. Its use in a production environment is not recommended as a
storage disruption while this setting is enabled, and can cause volumes to be resignatured. This can cause
virtual machines to become unavailable.
To enable the discovery and mounting of multiple clones at once, from one ESXi host command line, run the
following command:
esxcfg-advcfg --set 1 /LVM/EnableResignature
Scan the ESXi host storage adaptors. After the rescan, each of the thin clones show up under Datastores
with a snap- prefix. You can rename these in vCenter to match the naming scheme of the volume. Then,
disable this capability by running the following command:
esxcfg-advcfg --set 0 /LVM/EnableResignature
Step 4: Register virtual machines
Now that the thin clones have been seen by the ESXi farm, it is time to register the developer environments.
1. From the vCenter UI, select a host and click the Configuration tab.
2. Right-click a thin clone datastore and select Browse Datastore. This shows all the VMs that were
cloned.
3. Open each folder, right-click the .vmx file, and select Add to Inventory.
4. Rename the VM based on what developer environment it is going to be and select the correct folder
for it to live in.
Registering VM from thin clone datastore