3.2. Cloning a Virtual Machine
Before proceeding with cloning, shut down the virtual machine. You can clone the virtual machine using
virt-clone or virt-manager.
3.2.1. Cloning Guests with virt-clone
You can use
virt-clone to clone virtual machines from the command line.
Note that you need root privileges for
virt-clone to complete successfully.
The
virt-clone command provides a number of options that can be passed on the command line. These include general options, storage configuration options, networking configuration options, and miscellaneous options. Only the --original is required. To see a complete list of options, enter the following command:
# virt-clone --help
The
virt-clone man page also documents each command option, important variables, and examples.
The following example shows how to clone a guest virtual machine called "demo" on the default connection, automatically generating a new name and disk clone path.
Example 3.1. Using virt-clone to clone a guest
# virt-clone --original demo --auto-clone
The following example shows how to clone a QEMU guest virtual machine called "demo" with multiple disks.
Example 3.2. Using virt-clone to clone a guest
# virt-clone --connect qemu:///system --original demo --name newdemo --file /var/lib/xen/images/newdemo.img --file /var/lib/xen/images/newdata.img