SQL Clone Management Service requirements

• Windows Server 2012 or later, or Windows 8 or later (64-bit versions only)
• .NET 4.5.2 or later
• SQL Server 2008 R2 or later

SQL Clone Agent requirements

• Windows Server 2008 R2 or later, or Windows 7 or later (64-bit versions only)
• .NET 4.5.2 or later
• SQL Server 2008 or later (Express edition is sufficient)
• During install, the account chosen requires
  • Local admin privileges in order to use the Virtual Disk Service
  • Read/write access to network locations where images will be stored
  • If you wish to use Windows Authentication for SQL Server:
    • CREATE DATABASE on local SQL Server instances where clones will be created
    • VIEW ANY DEFINITION on local SQL Server instances where images will be created from

Limitations

At the moment, the SQL Clone Beta has the following limitations:

• The maximum size of an image (and therefore the maximum database size for cloning) is 2TB
• Databases with filestream and memory-optimized filegroups cannot be imaged
• Clones cannot be created on a SQL Server cluster
• CLR assemblies are not ported to other machines by SQL Clone. These may have to be registered in a post-clone step if they are required.
• SQL Clone does not currently support differential backups.
• Creating an image from a multi-database backup only creates an image for the first database in the backup.