When provisioning Horizon 7 Instant Clones, you may have noticed some new folders that were created in the VM and Template view in the vSphere Web Client.

Each of these folders has a specific purpose for Instant Clones:

• ClonePrepInternalTemplateFolder
  • cp-template-xxxx –  Virtual machine that is a template used to create Instant Clones; this is created from the master image.
• ClonePrepParentVmFolder
  • cp-parent-xxxx – These virtual machines exist in a 1:1 relationship to the number of ESXi hosts in the cluster. I have a four node cluster, therefore I have 4 clone prep parent virtual machines. Each ESXi host has one of these powered on and in memory in order to provision the Instant Clone VMs.
• ClonePrepReplicaVmFolder
  • cp-replica-xxxx – This virtual machine is used to create the clone prep parent virtual machines. It will be also used as necessary to provision additional clone prep parent virtual machines.
• ClonePrepResyncVmFolder
  • If the Instant Clones are updated with a new image, a virtual machine will be created here for staging purposes.