The first step, before you even start to build clones, is to create your master virtual desktop machine image, which should contain not only the operating system, core applications, and settings, but also the Horizon View Agent components. This virtual desktop machine will become your parent VM or your gold image from which all other virtual desktop machines will be created. We will cover the build process in Chapter 7, Building and Optimizing the Virtual Desktop OS. Linked clones are built and managed using View composer and the vCenter server.

Once the parent VM has been built, then you can start to build virtual desktops and virtual desktop pools using that image. An overview of the linked clone creation process is shown in the following diagram:

Take your gold image (1), and take a snapshot of it (2). When you create your desktop pool, this snapshot is selected and will become the replica (3) and will be set to be read-only. Each virtual desktop is linked back to this replica, hence, the term linked clone. When you start creating your virtual desktops, you create linked clones that are unique copies for each user.