1. Install Plesk

   Create a clean installation of Plesk. For instructions, see
   Installing Plesk for Windows Using Installer Console.

2. Configure Plesk

   Configure Plesk exactly the way you wish the cloned instances to
   appear. It may include the following:

   • User interface layout through custom views - configured at
     post-install configuration, see Plesk Single Server Post-install
     Configuration.
   • Interface preferences and localization, see Appearance and
     Branding.
   • Control panel appearance and interface elements, see Customizing
     Plesk Appearance and GUI
     Elements.
   • Hosting plans and subscriptions, see Hosting Plans and
     Subscriptions.
   • DNS template, see DNS
     Template.

3. Prepare for Cloning

   Use the
   %plesk_cli%cloning.exe --update -prepare-public-image true
   command to prepare a Plesk instance for cloning. You may also choose
   to configure certain additional options:

   • Preserve the initial configuration

     By default, the cloning.exe command will reset the
     configuration parameters of the instance: each cloned instance
     will have to be configured anew. Use -reset-init-conf false to
     preserve the initial configuration during cloning.

   • Reset the license

     Optionally, you may choose to remove the product license during
     cloning, so it is not copied throughout the cloned instances. Use
     -reset-license true to accomplish that.

   • Disable updates after cloning

     After the cloned instance is started, the availability of updates
     for the current version is checked explicitly and the updates are
     installed if necessary. Installation of updates is working under
     the same rules as in daily maintenance task. Updates installation
     can be disabled if option -skip-update true is passed while
     cloning.

   When IP pool reconfiguration is enabled, each time the server with
   Plesk is restarted, it will rediscover the IP addresses and
   reconfigure its IP pool accordingly. Use this when the virtual
   servers are allocated IP addresses dynamically. You may skip this
   step if the virtual servers you want to copy Plesk onto use static IP
   addresses. Also, omitting this option will make Plesk start faster
   because Plesk will not have to reconfigure its IP pool on each
   startup.

   %plesk_cli%ipmanage.exe --auto-remap-ip-addresses true
   

   For detailed information on the cloning utility, see
   cloning.exe: Server Cloning
   Settings.

4. Create a Snapshot

   If your software for managing virtual machines supports creating
   copies of virtual machines, which is normally true, stop (shut down)
   the virtual machine and create the image copy. Otherwise, if images
   copying is unavailable, you should use a special shutdown call that
   resets some instance data and then copy the machine by available
   means. The shutdown is performed by the following command from the
   command prompt (cmd.exe):

   sysprep /oobe /generalize /shutdown
   

Example: Preparing a Plesk for Windows instance for cloning

The following command prepares Plesk for cloning by resetting sensitive
data and product license while preserving the results of the
post-install configuration, and disabling automatic updates.

%plesk_cli%cloning.exe --update ^
    -prepare-public-image true ^
    -reset-init-conf false ^
    -reset-license true ^
    -skip-update true

(The caret ^ character splits a single long command into multiple lines to make it more readable.)