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POHow do you organize VMware Workstation images?
 

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  1. POHow do you organize VMware Workstation images?
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    <p>I currently use VMware workstation to create separate workspaces for various clients that I do work for. So for a given client I only install software needed for a specific job, and don't have to worry about software A for client #1 mucking up software B for client #2. </p> <p>With an adequate sized hard drive this works well but I am not sure I am using VMware to its best advantage. The steps I go through when setting up for a new job are:</p> <ol> <li>Do a windows update on a base VMware image that I have saved away.</li> <li>Make a full clone of the base image and rename for the new job</li> <li>Launch the new image and configure/install as necessary.</li> </ol> <p>After doing this for a while I now have a collection of VMware images sitting around that are all at different levels of updates unless I manually go into each image and kick off an update cycle. And if there is some new tool that I want in all of my images I have to also go around and do multiple manual installs. But I feel secure in knowing that each image is self contained (albeit taking 10+Gb at a hit) and that if anything happens to a single image then an issue cannot propagate into any other image. (Note that I do do regular backups of all my images)</p> <p>So my question is am I doing this the best way, or should I consider linked clones so that I only have to do a windows update or common application install on my base system? What are the pro's and con's of each way of organizing things?</p> <p>In addition, although I try not to keep data files inside the Image's local disks I find that the share to my local hard drive seems very slow compared to the Images file system, hence I tend to leave work inside the image. Should I force myself to not leave data inside the image? Or put another way, how much corruption can a VMware image take before any single file in the images filesystem becomes inaccessible?</p> <p><strong>Edit</strong></p> <p>Some thoughts I have had since posting this question</p> <ul> <li>With a full clone I can archive old work away and remove it from my primary hard drive</li> <li>Link clones take up a lot less space than a full clone, but I am concerned about archiving a linked clone away somewhere else.</li> <li>The time taken to make a full clone is not too significant (5-10 mins) and I am generally doing it on a weekly basis.</li> <li>However I also tend to do a lot of "Lets see what happens with a clean install", especially when I am documenting how to install applications for the client.</li> <li>I have found that my VMware images cause a lot of fragmentation on my hard drive, so I also end up doing a lot more defrag that before I used VMware. I am not sure if using linked clones would reduce this.</li> </ul>
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      1. POHow do you organize VMware Workstation images?
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    1. COI have almost the same problem, but in my case I have just one image and several snapshots, but the problem is the same, when I need to update something I have to update all the snapshots, hope there is a solution.
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      1. USFabio Gomes
    2. COI also have the same issue, for example I need to install a new application but how do I get it across the snapshots? Also any advice on naming/managing the images would be appreciated.
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