Introducing virtual machine templates

A virtual machine template (more commonly referred to as simply a template) is a pre-configured operating system image that can used to quickly deploy virtual machines. Using templates, you can avoid many repetitive installation and configuration tasks. The result is a fully installed, ready to operate (virtual) server in less time than manual installation would take.

Consider this example; suppose you wish to create four Apache web servers to host your web applications. Normally, with the traditional manual installation method, you would first have to create four virtual machines with specific hardware configurations, install an operating system on each of them one by one, and then download and install the required apache packages using yum or some other software installation method. This is a time-consuming job as you will be mostly doing repetitive work but with a template approach. However, it can be done in considerably less time. How? Because you...