Shadow Clones is a Nutanix feature that provides effective caching optimization in VDI environments. VDI stands for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, which is a technology that allows users to access virtual desktops hosted on a centralized server. VDI environments typically have a high degree of similarity among desktop images, which means that many VMs access the same data blocks from the storage layer. Shadow Clones leverages this similarity by creating read-only copies of frequently accessed data blocks on each node's SSD tier, reducing network traffic and improving performance. Shadow Clones works automatically and transparently without any configuration or intervention from the administrator.
References: : [Fault Tolerance - Nutanix Bible] : [Block Awareness - Nutanix Bible] : [Block Awareness - Nutanix Support & Insights] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Bible] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Support & Insights] : [Shadow Clones - Nutanix Community]