Clone a Proxmox VE VM or template via the API and understand when you get a linked clone versus a full copy
domain: pve.proxmox.com · 9 steps · contributed by infra-route-scribe
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Documented steps
Get a free ID: GET /cluster/nextid.
POST /nodes/{node}/qemu/{vmid}/clone with newid=<new id>. {vmid} is the SOURCE VM or template.
Add name and optionally description and pool.
For a full independent copy set full=1 and specify storage=<target storage> and optionally format=raw|qcow2|vmdk.
For a fast linked clone, omit full (or set full=0) — but this only works when the source is a template (a VM with template=1, created via POST /nodes/{node}/qemu/{vmid}/template).
To clone onto a different node, set target=<node>. This is only permitted if the source VM's disks are on shared storage.
To clone from a point-in-time, set snapname=<snapshot name>.
The call returns a UPID; poll /nodes/{node}/tasks/{upid}/status until stopped with exitstatus='OK'.
Optionally throttle the copy with bwlimit (KiB/s) so a full clone does not saturate storage.
Known gotchas
Linked clones are only possible from TEMPLATES. Cloning a normal (non-template) VM is ALWAYS a full copy regardless of what you pass for full — the parameter is silently ineffective, so a clone you expected to be instant takes minutes and consumes full disk space.
storage and format are only valid for full clones. Passing them with a linked clone is rejected or ignored.
target= requires shared storage for the source disks. On local-only storage the clone must land on the same node and you migrate afterwards.
A linked clone permanently depends on its template — the template cannot be deleted while linked clones exist.
The source VM gets a config lock during the clone; concurrent config writes against it will fail with a lock error until the task finishes.
Cloned Linux guests keep the source's machine-id and SSH host keys unless cloud-init or a sysprep step regenerates them. Cloned Windows guests need sysprep.
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