Cloning a VM boot disk for use on a second VM.

[Craig A. Sharp]

I have a running VM. I would like to clone the boot disk on the first VM and use the cloned disk to boot the second VM.
I have used the hpvmclone to create the vm template for the second VM but cannot figure out what to do with the boot disk.

[melvyn burnard]

and what is the backing store used fo rthe boot disk?
A LUN, a PV, an LV or a file?
your strategy will depend upon this

[Craig A. Sharp]

Backing store? I assume you mean what is the boot dev? it is a physical disk../dev/rdsk/c1t0d0.

[Tim Nelson]

Beware that the cloning feature will do just as it says, clone. Same CPU, same Mem, same disk. After the clone you will need to change all the disk backing stores.

I have yet to find a good use for the clone command. It does not copy the OS from one guest to another. An other than making you a copy of the config from one to another you still have just as much work to do as if you did not use the clone command.

My process.
Create the guests with hpvmcreate.
Allocate each some storage
Use ignite to clone the OS images after the 1st one is built.

[melvyn burnard]

so you have supplied a PV as the backing store, it is not in a VG, nor have any LV or file systems on it from the host'sw perspective.
That makes it slightg more dificult, as you woukld have to use something like dd (yuck) to copy the disc to another pv, then create the second VM, and when you boot it you need to change the hostname and ip address info very quickly or you have issues with duplicate ip addresses etc

[Craig A. Sharp]

I had thought of using dd. Yes I know that its ugly but it is the easiest way I can think of to get an exact duplicate of the first VM's boot disk because it will take the lif and data areas. Ignite is another option as I am thinking of setting up a VM as an ignite server. Not sure if that would work though. Might be worth a try.

[Torsten.]

To use "dd" could have some strange effects, but using the VMhost or another guest as an ignite server would be a good idea.