mittim12
Immortal
Immortal

I think Linked Clones would satisfy your requirements. Linked clones are basically a snapshot of a master image so you would have one "master vm" that holds the OS, maybe some core apps, and settings. The linked clones would be running snapshot of that "master vm" that would be greatly reduced in size. I think that linked clones should definitely be used in conjunction with application virtualization as well as roaming profiles to alleviate some of the storage overheard. Below is a link to a blog Tom did on linked clones. It should help you understand them a bit better.

http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=61

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