Does performance of linked clone get significantly worse with more and more guest OS updates?

[marcosscriven]

I've got linked clones working for both Linux and Windows 10 guests.

However, I'm concerned that say one or two years down the line the cumulative updates in the linked clones (that aren't in the base image) will mean a significant performance penalty. Or does it just mean extra storage? Is there some point it makes sense to start again with a new base template image?

I can't seem to get a clear idea from Googling "linked clone performance".

 

[aaron]

I would not expect a performance penalty. New data is written to the VMs disk and most likely after a long enough time, there will be little common usage between the template and a linked clone.

If you need to keep the VMs running a long time and don't mind the extra used space, consider creating full clones from the template. If you need to spin up a lot of clones in a short time, then linked clones are your friend as there will be no disk to copy.