CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8) Practice Question

The correct action is to use a utility like virt-sysprep to generalize the image. When a virtual machine is cloned, it is a bit-for-bit copy. If machine-specific data is not removed, all cloned VMs will have the same hostname, SSH keys, network configurations (like MAC addresses in configuration files), and machine-ID. This causes network conflicts and significant security issues. virt-sysprep is a tool specifically designed to reset or unconfigure a VM by removing this unique information, making it suitable for use as a template.

Converting the disk to qcow2 format is a good practice for templates because it allows for efficient storage use through copy-on-write, but it does not address the issue of machine uniqueness. Creating a snapshot captures the VM's state at a point in time but does not generalize it; cloning from such a snapshot would still result in duplicate identities. Resource allocation (CPU/RAM) on the source VM is irrelevant to the template creation process, as resources are assigned to new VMs when they are deployed from the template.