Home > Storage > PowerStore > Virtualization and Cloud > Dell PowerStore: Microsoft Hyper-V Best Practices > Use PowerStore snapshots to create a test environment
Besides VM recovery, you can use PowerStore snapshots to quickly create a test or development environment that mirrors a production environment. To complete this step, you can map thin clones to other host servers or clusters. When PowerStore snapshots containing VMs are replicated to another location, it simplifies performing this action at a different location.
Note: To avoid IP, MAC address, or server-name conflicts, place copies of existing VMs recovered from a thin clone in an isolated environment.
The procedure to use a thin clone to create a test environment from an existing Hyper-V guest VM is similar to VM recovery. The main difference is that the original VM continues operation, and the VM copy is configured so that it is isolated from the original VM.