maskinimage

Maskinimage is a term used to describe a complete, portable snapshot of a computer system that can be used to recreate a machine at another time or place. It typically includes the operating system, installed software, system configuration, and user data as of the moment the image was created. The concept is central to image-based deployment, backup, and disaster recovery.

A maskinimage is stored as a disk image or template that can be mounted, mounted-and-booted, or imported into virtualization or cloud environments. The image can represent a physical machine or a virtual machine and is used to rapidly deploy multiple identical hosts or restore systems after failure. Variants may include just the operating system and essential software, or a fully configured, ready-to-run system with user data included.

Common use cases include mass provisioning of virtual machines, creating standard development or testing environments, and enabling rapid failover in disaster recovery plans. In cloud computing, machine images serve as templates to spin up new instances, with providers offering their own image formats and catalogs (for example, cloud-optimized images or custom images).

Creation and management typically involve imaging and cloning tools. Linux environments often use dd, Clonezilla, or similar utilities, while Windows environments may use sysprep or specialized imaging software. Important considerations include licensing compliance, data privacy, image drift over time, and maintaining up-to-date security patches.

See also: machine image, disk image, template, snapshot, image-based deployment, cloud image.