Snapshots

Snapshots, often employed as a short-term solution are commonly used for patching, updates, or for quick tests with an option to rollback in case of a failure.

Snapshots, often employed as a short-term solution in testing and development environments, are commonly used for patching, updates, or for quick tests with an option to rollback in case of a failure. Their utility extends to certain scenarios in production environments too, especially when undertaking high-risk operations like OS updates or potential system-altering configuration changes.

Our snapshot implementation serves to provide rollback milestones. When an instance is booted to a specific snapshot, it permanently destroys all data written after the snapshot was taken. In a typical scenario, accessing snapshot data requires rebooting to that snapshot, effectively discarding any data accumulated post the snapshot's creation.

It is also paramount to understand that snapshots are not a replacement for a comprehensive backup strategy. Snapshots reside alongside your live data on the same system and unlike a full backup strategy, they do not generally provide a separate, recoverable data copy.

Creating a Snapshot

Create a snapshot using the portal

This guide outlines the steps to create a snapshot in the MNX.io portal. Please note that we recommend testing the rollback functionality on your system to ensure your application recovers properly before the need arises to use it.

• Access Instance Management Once logged in, find and click on the "Compute" or "Instances" section in the left-hand navigation menu to access your instances.

• Select the Instance From the list of instances, select the instance for which you want to create a snapshot.

Compute > Instances > Instance Details

• Create a Snapshot After selecting the instance, look for the "Snapshots" tab and click on it. Within this tab, find and click on the "Create Snapshot" button.

Create Snapshot

• Name Your Snapshot A dialog box will appear asking you to name your snapshot. Choose a meaningful name that will help you identify the snapshot later. It's a good practice to include the date and the state of the instance in the snapshot name. By default the name will be a datetime stamp.

Name your snapshot

• Initiate Snapshot Creation After naming your snapshot, click on the "Create" button. The snapshot creation process will start and it may take some time depending on the size of your instance.

Snapshot default name

• Monitor Snapshot Creation You can monitor the progress of the snapshot creation from the "Snapshots" tab. Once the snapshot has been created, it will appear in the list of available snapshots.

Creating a Snapshot using the Triton-CLI Command Line Utility

This guide will take you through the steps of creating a snapshot in the portal using the Triton-CLI command line utility. This process is a handy alternative if you prefer using the command line over the graphical user interface.

To get started, please refer to the Triton CLI tools installation documentation.

1. List Your Instances To list all of your instances, you can use the following command:

   triton instance list

2. Create a Snapshot To create a snapshot of a specific instance, you'll need to use the 'instance snapshot create' command followed by the instance ID. Like so:

   triton instance snapshot create <instance_id>

   Replace <instance_id> with the ID of the instance you want to create a snapshot for.

3. Name Your Snapshot To name your snapshot, append the command above with the desired name:

   triton instance snapshot create -n <snapshot_name> <instance_id>

   Replace <snapshot_name> with your desired snapshot name. Remember, it's a good practice to include the date and state of the instance in the snapshot name.

4. Monitor Snapshot Creation To check the status of your snapshot creation, use the 'instance snapshot get' command:

   triton instance snapshot get <instance_id> <snapshot_name>

   This will display the status of the specified snapshot.