Snapshots

Snapshots capture the state of your VM's boot disk at a point in time. Use them to back up before a risky change, clone a working environment, or restore a VM that broke after an update.

Take a snapshot

1. Open the VM detail page → Snapshots tab
2. Click Take Snapshot
3. Give it a name (e.g. before-upgrade); a timestamped name is suggested for you
4. Leave Shut down VM during snapshot checked (recommended) and click Create snapshot

With the shutdown option checked, the VM powers down before the snapshot is taken and comes back online automatically afterwards. This gives databases and filesystems a cleaner restore point. Uncheck it to snapshot the VM while it keeps running.

Each snapshot shows a status: Creating, Available, Restoring, Deleting, or Failed. Restore and other actions become available once the snapshot is Available.

Restore from a snapshot

1. Open the Snapshots tab
2. Find the snapshot you want to restore
3. Click Restore and confirm

danger

Restoring shuts down the VM, reverts its storage to the snapshot's point in time, and restarts it. Any changes made after the snapshot was taken will be lost.

Create a new VM from a snapshot

You can launch a new VM pre-loaded with a snapshot's disk state, useful for cloning a working environment, moving to a different plan, or testing a change without touching the original VM.

1. Go to Storage → Snapshots
2. Open the actions menu for an Available snapshot and click Create VM
3. Configure the new VM (name, region, plan) and confirm

The operating system image is inherited from the snapshot, so there is no image selection. VMs created from a snapshot are always persistent, even if the snapshot came from an ephemeral VM.

note

Snapshots survive their source VM. If the source VM is deleted, the snapshot is marked Detached in Storage → Snapshots and can still be used to create a new VM.

Delete a snapshot

Snapshots consume storage and are billed for the storage they use (shown as Billed storage in Storage → Snapshots). Delete ones you no longer need:

1. Open the Snapshots tab
2. Click Delete next to the snapshot and confirm

Deletion permanently removes the snapshot and its stored data; you will no longer be able to restore from it.

When to use snapshots

Situation	Recommendation
Before a major package upgrade	Take a snapshot first
Before editing system config	Take a snapshot first
Setting up a reusable base environment	Snapshot once, clone as needed
Routine backups of stateful data	Use a Volume instead; volumes are better suited for persistent data backups