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BackConveniently on the Safe Side With Snapshots
With a snapshot of your volumes, you can turn back time, so to speak: If everything is not running smoothly after a software upgrade, for example, you can simply restore your server to its old, functional state. You can now use this practical feature not only via API, but also via our web-based cloud control panel. Freeze an image of your setup before minor and major changes – it only takes a few clicks for your "Plan B".
Safe and flexible with snapshots
You are always wiser in hindsight. That is why with cloudscale you only decide after the fact whether a change has taken place at all: If everything went well and your server runs as expected, you leave it at that; however, if it turns out that the previous state was better, you restore it from the snapshot and let the failed change disappear from the timeline, so to speak. With up to 10 snapshots per volume, you can also "freeze" several intermediate states during an extensive migration and only decide later whether and to which point you want to return.
Snapshots support the security of your servers in several ways: Firstly, you reduce the residual risk associated with changes to practically zero – you always have the functional initial state for sure. This also lowers the barriers to installing available (security) updates and keeping your systems up to date. Snapshots also help you to run through an update process several times or in variants: Reset your lab system as often as you like and find the best approach for your change before you even touch the productive setup.
Tips for use
You can find your volumes with their snapshots in the control panel under "Services > Storage > Volumes"; the volumes connected to virtual servers are also linked on the servers' "Storage" tab.
Each snapshot has a name that you can define when you create it and also change later. For example, name your snapshot "After step 3 DB conversion" so that, if necessary, you can easily find the state you want to return to and do not have to rely solely on the date and time of the snapshot.
Volume snapshots are "crash-consistent", they freeze exactly the content of your virtual hard disk that is present when the snapshot is created (as if the server had "crashed" at that moment). If necessary, clarify how your application will behave if you reset the volume to such a state. It may make sense to shut down services or the entire server to create snapshots, so that caches, for example, are safely written to the volume and are therefore included in the snapshot.
If there are several snapshots of a volume, you can only revert to the most recent one. For an earlier state, simply delete the snapshots you want to skip – as soon as the desired snapshot is the latest, it will be available for revert. To roll back, a non-root volume must also be disconnected from the server or, in the case of a root volume, the virtual server must be switched off.
The fine print: please pay attention
Be aware that snapshots are no substitute for a proper backup. Volumes and the associated snapshots are stored in the same storage cluster, and in the event of a failure, the snapshots are potentially also affected. Furthermore, snapshots can only be used to revert entire volumes; it is not possible to selectively read/restore data.
We would like to warmly recommend the use of volume snapshots. Be it via our API – for example as part of your automated server management – or now also via the web-based control panel: maintain the possibility to try your changes again (and perhaps differently) if necessary or to undo them completely.
Keeps your options open:
Your cloudscale team