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Table Of Contents

Before you convert a virtual machine to a template, select it in the inventory and power it off.

Procedure

Right-click the virtual machine and select Template > Convert to Template.

vCenter Server marks that virtual machine as a template and displays the task in the Recent Tasks pane.

Clone Virtual Machine to Template in the vSphere Client

Cloning a virtual machine to a template creates a template copy of the virtual machine while leaving the

original virtual machine in place.

Prerequisites

You must be connected to vCenter Server to clone a virtual machine to a template. You cannot create

templates if you connect directly to an ESXi host.

Procedure

1 Right-click the virtual machine and select Template > Clone to Template.

2 Give the new template a name, select its inventory location, and click Next.

3 Pass through the target location page and click Next.

4 Specify in which format to store the template’s virtual disks and click Next.

Option Action

Same format as source

Use the same format as the source virtual machine.

Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed

Create a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the

virtual disk is allocated during creation. Any data remaining on the

physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand

at a later time on first write from the virtual machine.

Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

Create a thick disk that supports clustering features such as Fault

Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time.

In contrast to the thick provision lazy zeroed format, the data remaining

on the physical device is zeroed out during creation. It might take longer

to create disks in this format than to create other types of disks.

Thin Provision

Use the thin provisioned format. At first, a thin provisioned disk uses only

as much datastore space as the disk initially needs. If the thin disk needs

more space later, it can grow to the maximum capacity allocated to it.

Chapter 11 Working with Templates and Clones in the vSphere Client

VMware, Inc. 101