What is a difference between vcenter's template and virtual machine?

Question

As in the topic.

I wonder since I cannot find this information anywhere and currently I am using a virtual machine (linux) on my vcenter which is cloned and then a special shell script is run on this freshly cloned machine to setup up environment and IP adresses etc.

Maybe I would be able to benefit from templates this way.

Answer 1

I think this will be helpful

https://www.robertparten.com/virtualization/vmware-difference-between-clone-and-template/

Few Differences in my opinion:-

1. Virtual machine is the running instance while Template is compact copy of VM ( with baseline and factory settings), which can be stored anywhere.
2. one need to deploy template to make running VM.
3. one can create copy from both VM and template but in VM you need to clone it and in case of template you need to deploy it.
4. moving between different setup is easy with template.

Rest are already mentioned in link provided.

But first you need to search on your own and still have doubts than only ask, that's how we all learn.

Happy Learning!

Answer 2

Looking at these two scenarios:

1. Create a template from your active VM, then deploy from the template.
2. Deploy from the active VM directly.

As far as I know, there will be no difference in the end result if you run these scenarios in the near future. You'll still have to run a script in order to get your IPs setup, etc.

So what's the difference?
If you mess stuff up with your active VM, change things around or whatever, you lose the ability to deploy from the (good) setup you had.
Once you make a template from your active VM, that configuration is saved as a file on the ESX (or the storage, not 100% sure) and can be re-deployed in the future.