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Full Clone vs Linked Clone vs Instant Full Clone — Which One Should You Actually Use?

George Fady Lv2Posted 2026-Sep-01 18:42

Hi all, George here — Technical Support Engineer at Sangfor. A question I get a lot on support tickets: "Which clone method should I use for HCI?" So let's break it down.
Three cloning methods, three very different trade-offs:
MethodSpeedIndependenceBest For
Full CloneSlow (depends on data size)Fully independent immediatelySource/destination NOT on aSAN
Linked CloneSecondsStays dependent on original image — can affect read performanceDev/test, low-priority workloads, saving space
Instant Full Clone Seconds to startIndependent once background copy finishesDefault recommended method on aSAN
Instant Full Clone is the clever one — it's aSAN-exclusive and gives you the best of both worlds: boots in seconds like a linked clone, but a background task quietly copies the full data so it ends up fully independent with zero lasting performance hit.
A precaution worth flagging: once an HCI VM becomes a template, it can never be restarted again. If that template gets damaged, every VM derived from it becomes unusable too. Plan your template lifecycle carefully!
Discussion: Which clone method do you rely on most in production, and why? Anyone had a template get damaged and felt the downstream impact on derived VMs?

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