An overview of instant and linked clone maintenance
To understand why a linked clone desktop requires different techniques from a physical or full clone desktop, we must again understand what makes it different. The following diagram shows the relationship between the linked clone disk and the shared replica disk:
The replica disk is a read-only copy of the virtual desktop master image virtual hard disk; it is shared among as many as 1000 desktops within a given Horizon desktop pool. The linked clone disk is used by the virtual desktop when it needs to write data; one virtual desktop is created for each linked clone desktop.
One of the primary advantages of linked clone desktops is that they require far less storage space than full clone desktops; this is made possible by the shared replica disk. This reduced storage utilization is certainly useful at the time the desktops are deployed, but to maintain this advantage over time, you must use the Horizon native recompose or refresh features...
