Practical Cloud Knowledge: Install, Configure, and Manage - Deploying and Managing a Cloud Infrastructure - page 191

Linked Clone Usage Scenario
Because a linked clone can be created swiftly, it is very useful in development scenarios
such as bug fixing Take the scenario of a test engineer finding a difficult-to-replicate bug
using a virtual machine. The development engineer can quickly create multiple linked
clones of that virtual machine to ensure that there are working virtual machines exhibit-
ing the current state. Then he can proceed to work fixing the bug on the clones and have
multiple machines handy for multiple solutions. In the meantime, the test engineer may
continue working on the parent virtual machine without affecting the clones.
Full Clone This is a full copy of a virtual machine. Every aspect of a virtual machine,
including all of the contents in its virtual drives, are copied over to the clone, so this
means that it requires the same amount of disk space, more or less, as the original virtual
machine and the cloning process is quite long.
The main benefit of this is that it creates a fully independent virtual machine, which
offers a lot of flexibility, especially for testing applications and new configurations and
creating comparisons between performances.
Exercise 7.6 walks you through creating a new clones.
EXERCISE 7.6
Creating Clones
Though quite similar in purpose, a clone and a snapshot are different in a major way. As
stated, a snapshot is merely a picture of a virtual machine's specific state, meaning that
you are still dealing with the same single virtual machine. Depending on your application,
that may pose some limitations. A full clone, on the other hand, is an entirely separate
virtual machine independent of the original virtual machine, so what happens to one does
not necessarily happen to the other, unless you are using a linked clone. So when you
have created a new clone, you can also start taking snapshots of that new virtual machine.
1. First, you have to determine your reason for making a clone.
If it is just for personal convenience and you do not need it to do something entirely
different and function independently, then a linked clone would be the best option
because it takes very little space and can be created quickly. However, if you need
the clone to function independently from its parent, then you would need a full clone.
With a full clone, you can make it into a parent and create additional linked or full
clones from it, create and revert to snapshots, and perform other activities that can
be performed only on fully independent virtual machines. Also, creating templates
destroys a virtual machine, so you need to clone a virtual machine before making it
into a template or make the template from the clone.