A snapshot (as the name implies) is an image, or copy of your data at a given moment in time. Snapshots are useful as backups of “known good” states for data or system disks, and they allow you to roll back to a given state, which is useful for recovery from problems or for testing and software development.

Gandi snapshots are available on our later storage infrastructure based on ZFS. If it is, you will see that indicated when you create it. The next section describes this.

First it is necessary to verify that your disk is compatible with the snapshot feature (instant copy of the disk). For this, verify in the disk management interface that there is the mention: “snapshot possible: yes”

This means that the disk is built from the new Gandi Hosting structure and can use the “snapshot” and “duplicate disk” features.

You may make as many snapshots as you want. The only limit is that of how much available quota you have in your account (a manual snapshot requires an extra 50%, while a profile snapshot requires an extra 10%).

There are two ways to take snapshots: Manual or with a Profile (automatic):

• Manual snapshots (taking snapshots 'on the fly')
• Snapshots via profiles (schedule snapshots)

To restore a snapshot, go to the “Disks” tab on your “Servers” page, and then click on the disk for which the snapshots are linked in order to see the list of snapshots available.

Then click on the little round arrow icon that you see on the snapshot line you want to use, and it will then restore that snapshot. Warning: the act of restoring a snapshot of a previous state will:

• Put the disk in the state it was in at the time the snapshot was taken (all of the data added since then will be absent)
• Delete all the snapshots taken after it
• Reboot the server if the disk is attached

The restoration of a snapshot only takes a couple of minutes.

To create a disk using a snapshot, go to the “Disks” tab on your “Servers” page and then, click on the disk for which the snapshot is linked.

Click on the icon “copy a disk” next to the snapshot to use to create the new disk.

You give the name of your choice to the new disk, activate repelling and in the second list, place the disk that you want to repel against the disk that you are going to create.

After a few minutes, the new disk will be created and available from the “Disks” tabs.

• VPS Cloud hosting: Snapshot Profiles