How to branch a virtual server in Hyper-V?

Question

We use Hyper-V extensively in our development environment. Each developer has a virtual server that they own and then we have a bunch of build, test, R&D, and staging virtual servers.

Is there any documented or best practice way to duplicate a virtual machine in Hyper-V?

What I would really like to be able to do is to split a machine from a snapshot and have multiple virtual machines that both roll up underneath a common root machines snapshot.

I don't mind having to run some tools or having to rejoin the domain, I just want the ability to spawn new machines from an existing snapshot.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

I think the real problem is the duplication of servers on the Network - plus that evil kerberos-keys-getting-out-of-date issue that any offline copy of a Virtual Server can suffer.

I'd suggest creating a SysPreped image as the base and then create multiple machines from that. I don't think branching servers would be very wise (at least not on the same network).

Otherwise I'd just copy and paste the VHD to a new path and create a new server for each branch - keeping them in their own network space (and IP range).