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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?
Arsalan Israr Lv1Posted 2026-Sep-02 15:00
  
Thanks for Sharing
Sangfor Jojo Lv5Posted 2026-Sep-03 12:01
  
Let's brainstorm.