Best practices for Hot Clones v Cold Clones

[stratolynne]

A peer and I were discussing the pros/cons of hot clones versus cold clones for making copies of VMs when changing VM attributes, installing new software in the VM itself (where the System Administrator has a baseline for fallback), changing HW versions, etc.

Can someone comment on best practices here?  Hot Clone or Cold Clone?

Appreciating any advice.

[vGuy]

you can also use snapshots for most of those options...snapshots capture hw config as well.

just ensure to delete them once the vms have passed healthchecks..