Proxmox VE How To Clone VMs From Templates

virtual machines just like physical computers require an operating system to be installed and that does take time now hypervisors like proxmox ve can save you a lot of time because they allow you to create templates so rather than creating a new virtual machine and then installing not writing system every single time instead what you do is to create a template and then you use that template to create your virtual machines and that way you completely skip the whole process of having to install the operating system but how do you actually create templates in proxmox ve and how do you use them well if that's something that you're interested in finding out then stick around and watch this video because that's what we'll be going over now template is basically a virtual machine that will be cloning other virtual machines from and while you can obtain pre-built templates it is better to create your own because then you know what software is being installed so the first thing we need to do is to create a virtual machine that will have the operating system we want to use but has also got common settings that the other virtual machines will inherent so first thing to do is Click create VM now I'm going to be creating an actual Debian template so I'm just going to call it actual depth template to make it a bit easier to identify what I can do is I can change the ID here so for example if I set this to 500 it should appear much lower down the list now what I actually set this to really depends but this is just a lab roxmox ve server so I don't expect that many virtual machines on this computer anyway so 500 should be enough to keep this template right at the bottom of the list then click on next I need to pick out the Debian operating system to install on this I'll click on next I'm not going to change any of these default settings but again these are settings that all the other virtual machines we create going forward will inherit so if you want to make any changes to these do that now add one so I'm just going to click next same goes to the disks I could add more disks if I wanted them but I don't so I'm just going to click next I'm going to set the number of CPU caused to and I'm just going to leave the default setting of two gig for memory or the actual network setup well this is going to change probably depending on the actual virtual machines you build later on but you can set a comment setting if you like so for example maybe all of the virtual machines are billed from the actual template will be in VLAN 200 for example so I can set that here and now it just saves me having to make that change later on and then click on next confirm my settings now that gives me my base virtual machine I've now got to install the actual operating system which is going to take time so I'll do that and then once it's ready we'll pick up from there once the operating system is installed you'll want to configure any common settings that should apply to all of your virtual machines as well as to install any additional software as well that way you can save yourself some additional time when you're creating virtual machines so in the case of this Debian Linux computer for example I installed the actual open SSH server during the install process but I've since installed sudo and ufw and I've configured the actual firewall to restrict SSH access to only management computers so you'll want to do something similar with Windows computers as well probably including installing antivirus software but once you've got everything installed and you're happy with that virtual machine you'll want to shut the actual virtual machine down having said that when it comes to Windows computers you will want to run sysprep that way each virtual machine can end up with its own unique system identifier now that I'm finished with this virtual machine one final thing I'm going to do is just remove any connectivity to the existing ISO file that was used to create it and then what we now need to do is to convert this virtual machine into an actual template so to do that you go to more and select convert template it just asks one final time make sure you want to convert this virtual machine into a template so I'll click yes to say I do and it's now converted it into a template so you can see one slight difference is in the little icon that you get just to the left the virtual machine you just see a little PC next to it or a monitor if you will whereas here you've got a kind of like a little document page just next to it but it means we've now actually got a template that we can use to create our other virtual machines from so now I'm going forward if I want to create a virtual machine which is based on the Debian operating system instead of clicking create VM and then going through that whole process of installing the operating system each time what I can do is Select my template here click on more and then clone and fill in the details for this particular VM so I only have one node in this test lab so we'll leave that as is I'm hoping to stick with the actual VM ID that it's picked out but I do need to give it a unique name so let's call it that test for example I've got a choice of a link clone or a full claw now there's all sorts of issues you could run into with a linked clone for example if the actual templates were to get damaged if changes were made to the actual template that can have big problems for the virtual machines even so far as any virtual machine which is linked to the template me a little longer work so unless you're really strapped for resources or you're running in a lab for example a full clone would probably make more sense because it's completely independent of the actual template it doesn't matter what happens to this template once this virtual machine has been built because it's totally independent of it so yes it does say resources but there are risks associated with it that you need to bear in mind I've also got a choice to pick a different Target storage if I wanted to otherwise by default it just goes into the same location where the actual template's currently being stored but either way once I've made up my decisions here I can click on clone and then off it'll go it'll actually clone that actual template to give me a new virtual machine which should be running a Debian operating system in this case well this virtual machine is now up and running although the actual cloning process was extremely quick as you can see because I set up the original virtual machine to block SSH access and only allow access from management computers this virtual machine and all virtual machines that I create going forward will have those same restrictions but although when I created this virtual machine and gave it a name of Dev test within proxbox ve that has no impact on the actual operating system so I do still need to do that every time I create a new virtual machine I'm going to have to update the hosts file in the hostname file in the case of Linux you have to do something similar for actual Windows computer I could if I wanted to give this computer its own unique static IP address so I could edit the actual network settings or I could actually just leave it on DHCP and then Reserve an IP address through DHCP if I wanted to the good thing is I don't really have to worry about Mac addresses because if we go back to actual template you can see that this network card starts with a Mac address of a to e whereas this new virtual machine we've created starts with one which is b e so it does get its own unique Mac address through that actual clothing process but what this means now is going forward I can create virtual machines much much quicker than if I was just going through this normal process of creating a virtual machine from scratch well thanks for making it to the end of this video I really do hope you found it useful if so then do click the like button and share us that'll help get the video to more people who might find it useful as well if you've got any comments or suggestions please post those in the comments section below and if you're new to the channel and you'd like to see more content like this then yes do subscribe just remember to set the Bell icon to actually send you notifications when new content gets released although I also post to Twitter as well as Facebook if you'd like to help the channel and support it you can actually make contributions through PayPal and buy me a coffee I've also got links to patreon and there's also the join membership option for YouTube itself patreon and YouTube members do have the option to actually benefit from Early Access as well but above all many thanks for watching this video I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Tech Tutorials - David McKone

Views: 2,811

Keywords: proxmox ve, proxmox clone vm, proxmox ve template, proxmox template, proxmox clone template, proxmox

Id: xw1g5kNDlPs

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2022