Instant Clone in vCenter (no Horizon): MAC address change of running Ubuntu clone without reboot

[tFable]

Hi, All,

Happy to be part of the VMware forums community!

We have been working on implementing Instant Clones in our organization via the vCenter API (we do not use Horizon) on Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 VMs. Our goal is to create instant clones of running (not frozen) parent VM's. We are on 7.0U2. The behavior is the same for frozen parents as well

One thing that we haven't been able to solve is how to get the guest OS of the live instant clone VM to "see" the new MAC address of the VM without rebooting it. Even though the instant clone VM object has a different MAC that the parent in the VM settings, the guest OS

We have tried things like "netplan apply", ifconfig <ifname> up/down" but the MAC address in the guest OS remains the same.

How do folks handle this situation for running instant clones?

Thanks in advance for any help!
t

[zenmatrix]

Whats in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, at least in the past when I'd clone ubuntu vms for a template I'd delete that before I'd shut it off and the clone would recreate it as needed.

[tFable]

Hey @zenmatrix ,

Thanks for the reply.

The folder you indicated has a file called ubuntu--vg-ubuntu-lv.rules which has the following contents:

# Written by curtin
SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="add|change", ENV{DM_NAME}=="ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv", SYMLINK+="disk/by-dname/ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv"

That said, I'm interested in instant cloning powered on VM's. In this case, the created instant clone is also powered on. My goal, if possible, is to make the destination instant clone machine accessible over the network without restarting it.

One of the advantages of instant cloning is the fact that it retains the memory contents of the parent. Having to reboot the instant clone to make it operational, at least to my untrained brain, seems like it defeats the purpose. But perhaps I'm missing something?

Thanks again! Happy to hear your thoughts.