Fast provisioning saves time by using linked clones for virtual machine provisioning operations.
A linked clone is a duplicate of a virtual machine that uses the same virtual disk as the original, with a chain of delta disks to track the differences between the original and the clone. If you deactivate fast provisioning, all provisioning operations result in full clones.
A linked clone cannot exist on a different vCenter Server data center or datastore than the original virtual machine.
When you fast provision a VM, VMware Cloud Director creates a shadow virtual machine to support linked clone creation across vCenter Server data centers and datastores for the virtual machines that are associated with a specific vApp template.
A shadow virtual machine is an exact copy of the original virtual machine. The shadow virtual machine is created on the data center and datastore where the linked clone is created.
In-place consolidation of a fast-provisioned VM is not supported on storage containers that employ native snapshots. VVOLs and VAAI-enabled datastores use native snapshots, so fast-provisioned VMs deployed to one of these storage containers cannot be consolidated. If you need to consolidate a fast-provisioned VM deployed to a VVOL or VAAI-enabled datastore, you must relocate it to a different storage container.
