Linked Clones for ESX 3.+

Download script: ghetto-esx-linked-clones.sh

Compatiable with: ESX 3.x+

Please find more details located at: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9020

This script allows users to create linked cloned virtual machine(s) from a master (or golden) virtual machine. Clones may be stored on any type of datastore (LOCAL, SAN, NFS) that is presented to the ESX host. The script is very capable in deploying a large VDI environment in a relatively short amount of time.

There are currently 3 supported use cases:

1) Default
--Description: Generate linked clones located in the same datastore that houses the master (golden) virtual machine. Writes will be directed to their respective linked virtual machine delta file with reads originating from the master virtual machine.

2) Distributed Write(s) I/O
--Description: Generate linked clones evenly across available datastores of choice. Reads will originate from the specified master virtual machine while writes are directed towards their respective virtual machine delta files that have been dispersed across the specified datastores.

3) Distributed Read(s) & Write(s) I/O
--Description: Duplicate the master virtual machine on available datastores of choice and evenly generate linked clones off of each duplicated master virtual machine. Reads and writes will be isolated onto the datastore of the linked clone(s) in question. This process is similar to running multiple instances of the default behavior of the script.

Note: This linked clones script is virtual machine OS independent (i.e. it is not restricted to just Windows OS's for VDI environment). For example, one can utilize this script to their advantage in development environments where new VMs need to be (mass) cloned quickly for testing.