Snapshots are useful for development and testing purposes. Admins can't use snapshots to recover individual files they must restore a snapshot in its entirety because the system deletes any files from previous snapshots. The system can't restore a snapshot if a previous snapshot file or the original virtual disk is corrupted or unavailable. ![]() As a result, it isn't practical to retain snapshots for any significant length of time, which makes them ineffective for long-term data protection.Īdmins must also reconstruct snapshots to restore a VM. The longer a system retains and accumulates snapshots, the more disk space admins lose. They can quickly accumulate and take up valuable disk space, which can harm performance. Admins don't need to wait for backup files to download from another location because the system can store snapshots alongside existing VM files.īut snapshots come with several challenges. Snapshot files are space-efficient because the system stores them as delta files and not exact VM replicas. Admins can then combine a specific snapshot with any archived snapshots and the original virtual disk to restore a VM. This process automatically occurs and provides a chain of connected delta files. For each VM, snapshots provide restore points that roll back a VM to when the system created the snapshot.Ī system creates snapshots as incremental delta files - or change logs - that track any changes made since the previous snapshot. VM snapshots enable admins to preserve VM data, such as files, configurations, memory and power settings at a specific point in time. ![]() What are VM snapshots and when should admins use them? ![]() The main distinction between backups and snapshots is that backups are independent, self-contained files that don't require cross-file dependencies to restore a VM, whereas snapshots rely on dependent files for VM restoration. Backups store VM data as a direct copy in a separate location, such as the cloud, which enables admins to restore the original VM for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. Admins can't use snapshots as backups because snapshots rely on delta files to temporarily store VM data locally. VM snapshots and backups both retain VM data, but they satisfy different use cases.
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