User`s guide

Operations on Virtual Machines and Containers 75
Managing Templates
A template in Parallels Server Bare Metal is a pre-configured virtual machine that can be easily
and quickly deployed into a fully functional virtual machine. Like any normal virtual machine, a
template contains hardware (virtual disks, peripheral devices) and the operating system. It can
also have additional software installed. In fact, the only main difference between a virtual
machine and a template is that the latter cannot be started.
In Parallels Server Bare Metal, you can perform the following operations on templates:
 create a new template
 list the existing templates
 create a virtual machine from a template
These operations are described in the following subsections in detail.
Create a Template
In Parallels Server Bare Metal, you can create a virtual machine template using the pctl
clone utility. Making a template may prove useful if you need to create several virtual
machines with the same configuration. In this case, your steps can be as follows:
1 You create a virtual machine with the required configuration.
2 You make a template on the basis of the created virtual machine.
3 You use the template to create as many virtual machines as necessary.
Let us assume that you want to create a template of the My_VM virtual machine. To do this, you
can run the following command:
# pctl clone My_VM --name template1 --template
Clone the My_VM VM to VM template template1...
Operation progress 98%
The VM has been successfully cloned.
This command clones the My_VM virtual machine and saves it as the template1 template.
After the template has been successfully created, you can use it for creating new virtual
machines.
Listing Templates
Sometimes, you may need to get an overview of the virtual machine templates available on your
Parallels server. For example, this may be necessary if you plan to create a virtual machine from
a specific template, but do not remember its exact name. In this case, you can use the pctl
list command to list all templates on the Parallels server and find the necessary one:
# pctl list -t
{4ad11c28-9f0e-4086-84ea-9c0487644026} win-2003 template1
{64bd8fea-6047-45bb-a144-7d4bba49c849} rhel template3
{6d3c9d6f-921a-484d-9772-bc7096f68df1} win-2003 template2
In this example, 3 virtual machine templates exist on the Parallels server. The information on
these templates is presented in the form of a table with the following columns (from left to
right): the template ID, the operating system contained in the template, and the template name.