Clone
======

You can create a duplicate of a slice while the slice continues to run. You may select 
the existing plan, or a larger plan for clones.  Since they are a subset of :doc:`create <create>`, 
they provide some of the same options:

* **Hostname**
* :doc:`Automatic Backups <backups>`
* :ref:`private_ip`
* :doc:`Add firewall <../networking/firewalls>`

**SSH Keys** (if any), will be identical to whatever is on the original slice.

.. Tip::

   There are many good use cases for clones.  For example, one might be able to do a 
   resize with greatly reduced downtime by doing something like the following:

    - Provision a FlexIP to the original slice and update DNS to point to it.
    - Once confirmed working, make a clone of the original slice.
    - Sync everything to be up to date as closely as possible using CLI tools like ``rsync``
    - Once ready, reassign the FlexIP to your clone to bring it instantly into production.
    - If anything goes wrong, reassign FlexIP back to original.