topic Re: VMware View & Flexclone in VMware Solutions Discussions

VMware View & Flexclone

nsitps1976 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:58:54 GMT

Is there any benefit in using Flexclone in a VMware View SAN environment? – The NetApp and VMware View Solution guide makes reference to file Flexclone, which is NAS right??

On another note, what is the benefit of using Flexclone vs mounting a snapshot for creating clones of your environment for test etc? And ihs this the same for NAS and SAN?

Re: VMware View & Flexclone

rmharwood — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:02:19 GMT

I'm not sure about your first question. The cloning done by VSC in a NAS environment works on a VMDK file level, which obviously is inside of the LUN in a SAN environment. Perhaps the VSC guide will go into more detail about the provisioning and cloning requirements when using SAN.

On your second question - we've tried this kind of thing before but the problem is that VMware will not start a virtual machine if any of the VMDK's are not writable, which, of course, in a snapshot they are not.

Your other option regarding cloning of VMs is to use VMware's View Composer which allows, I believe, the creation of "linked clones". This, however, requires the enterprise level license of View and I don't think can be used in conjunction with VSC.

Hope this helps a little.

Richard

Re: VMware View & Flexclone

nsitps1976 — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:34:15 GMT

Thanks - what about LUN clones? I also hear these being mentioned