Efficient provisioning of cloned virtual machine images using deduplication metadata

A system, comprising:

• a first portion of a first memory configured to store data for a first virtual machine comprising a first unique identification data associated with the first virtual machine and deduplication metadata describing deduplicated data for an operating system and at least one application;
• a processor configured to receive a request to copy the first virtual machine to form a second virtual machine and to form the second virtual machine based on a portion of the deduplication metadata associated with the data for the first virtual machine, the processor being further configured to link the second virtual machine to the portion of the deduplication metadata corresponding to the operating system and the at least one application from the data for the first virtual machine stored in the first portion of the memory by copying one or more files comprising the deduplication metadata associated with the deduplicated data for the first virtual machine;
• and
• a second portion of a second memory configured to store a second unique identification data for the second virtual machine independent of the first unique identification data associated with the first virtual machine, and
• wherein the processor modifies a reference link counter each time the one or more files comprising deduplication metadata associated with the deduplicated data for the first virtual machine is copied.