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A snapshot is a copy of data taken at a specific point in time.

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Is this how LVM snapshots work?

I'm trying to figure out how LVM snapshots work so I can implement it on my fileserver but I'm having difficulty finding anything on google that explains how it works, instead of how to use it for a ...
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Malfist
  • 807
1 vote
2 answers
844 views

Automate Amazon EBS Snapshot creation?

Once in a while I would go to http://aws.amazon.com/console and manually right click my EBS volume and create a snapshot. This is kind of tedious and I would forget sometimes. Is it possible to ...
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bbonamin
  • 167
29 votes
4 answers
50k views

Why VM snapshots are affecting performance?

I read in one of the VMware KB articles that snapshots will directly affect VM performance. But my team keeps asking me how snapshots can affect performance. I would like to give them solid reason ...
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Samselvaprabu
  • 1,311
19 votes
7 answers
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Commit or revert a Linux LVM snapshot?

I'm about to perform an experimental upgrade on my CentOS 5 server. If the upgrade fails, I want to be able to back out the changes to the filesystem. This scenario seems similar to the example in ...
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Shewfig
  • 481
13 votes
3 answers
15k views

Snapshot/rollback for libvirt+KVM?

I've recently begun using KVM for my development/test environment on a Linux host system with 8G memory. Prior, I was using VMware Fusion for my virtual environment, but my Macbook only has 2G memory. ...
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jtimberman
  • 7,607
6 votes
5 answers
17k views

How do I delete ESXi vm snapshots using the least additional space possible?

We have a tree of about 15 snapshots of a virtual machine that runs Win2k8, as you may guessed our datastore is soon to run out of space. My objective is to delete all the snapshots, as it seems it ...
m0s's user avatar
m0s
  • 215
5 votes
4 answers
7k views

Hidden Periodic Screenshots on a corporate workstation?

Can anyone recommend something that allows us to take hidden periodic screenshots of a workstation? We have a user who we believe is abusing his computer privileges. We have our suspicions that he ...
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ssxuser80
  • 53
2 votes
1 answer
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Mongodb on AWS EC2 backup strategy

I'm running Mongodb on AWS EC2 instance. Data/log/and journal are stored in a separate volume, formatted as xfs. Currently we are stopping the mongodb instance to take a snapshot, but reading this: ...
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Felice Pollano
  • 169
35 votes
4 answers
17k views

LVM snapshots vs. file system snapshots

As far as I know, LVM makes it possible to take snapshots of a volume. There are also a number of file systems (ZFS, Btrfs, reiserfs, ...) which supports snapshots. However, I've never understood the ...
nip3o's user avatar
nip3o
  • 507
28 votes
6 answers
13k views

Why are snapshots considered as temporary backups not real backups?

I am using VMware ESXi. In our team we use to provide snapshots for long term backup. Then we faced issues like memory spillover and the server got hang up. I started reading in VMware knowledgebase ...
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Samselvaprabu
  • 1,311
12 votes
3 answers
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Proper way of handling LXC containers on btrfs

Lets say we have one server with lxc installed, and a lxc container used for as a base img /var/lib/lxc/ubuntu_base. For simplicity let's forget the config changes after copying the base img. some ...
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zidarsk8
  • 394
11 votes
3 answers
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Can NetApp Snapshots be used as Backups?

Our shop relies very heavily on NetApp Volume Snapshots for backups. We use traditional agent-based tape backups for some of our data but by and large we rely on the Snapshots for the majority of our ...
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user62491
8 votes
1 answer
10k views

RDS snapshot: how long does I/O suspension occur?

As we're relying on RDS Postgresql manual backup for our backup strategy, we encountered the issue with the possible downtime of the RDS instance (single AZ) during snapshot creation. According to AWS:...
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Arcobaleno
  • 191
6 votes
0 answers
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Figure out the used space on the snapshot thin volume

I have the following lvm configuration. Hard Disk: /dev/sdb (Size 10 GB) VG: vg_root on /dev/sdb THIN_POOL thin_pool occupying the whole physical extent lvcreate -y --extents 100%free --thin vg_root/...
gudge's user avatar
gudge
  • 209
5 votes
2 answers
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Is this btrfs snapshot removal performance normal?

I have several boxes running Debian 8, dovecot and btrfs. I'm using btrfs snapshots for short term backup. For this purpose I keep 14 snapshots of the mail subvolume. Performance is OK until it comes ...
tim's user avatar
tim
  • 1,217
3 votes
2 answers
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export XenServer snapshot as file via console

I have created a snapshot of a Citrix XenServer virtual machine using XenCenter, and now I would like to save this snapshot as an *.xva file, just as if I right-click on the snapshot icon in XenCenter ...
nn4l's user avatar
nn4l
  • 1,336
3 votes
4 answers
7k views

libvirt and qemu/kvm -snapshot option

Using libvirt, I want to use QEMU's '-snapshot' option. That way, when the machine shuts down, all of the disk changes that were made get destroyed. Here is the manual for the -snapshot option: ...
user avatar
user34480
3 votes
2 answers
3k views

Linux live hot backup snapshot

I have a VPS with linode and they have hot backup of running system. I have multiple times restored the image when I do something stupid or mess up some install etc How do they do live hot backup , ...
doesnt_matter's user avatar
doesnt_matter
  • 65
3 votes
2 answers
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Is it possible to create an EBS AMI for windows EC2 instance?

We have a Windows server (EBS backed) running in EC2. We make regular snapshots for data backups. I'd like to create a new EC2 instance from one of these snapshots. Yes, I realise this is the same as ...
Matt Connolly's user avatar
Matt Connolly
  • 157
2 votes
1 answer
253 views

VMWare: Are long running snapshots really THAT bad?

This is ESXi 5.5. I know that the VMWare KB is very against long running snapshots, however I do not know of another way to do this. Let's say I have a base Linux system and want to spin up a unique ...
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jladsfaljsdfjladsf
  • 31
2 votes
0 answers
284 views

ZFS Snapshots (Missing Incremental)

Assume two Zpools on Solaris 11.3. Pool A and Pool B. Pool A contains PoolA/FileSystem1@Snap3 Pool B contains PoolB/FileSystem1@Snap1 and PoolB/FileSystem1@Snap2 Is there a way to update Pool B ...
Copy Run Start's user avatar
Copy Run Start
  • 734
1 vote
1 answer
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Replacing root filesystem with EC2 snapshot

This documentation describes "Restoring an Amazon EBS Volume from a Snapshot". Having done that this documentation explains "Making an Amazon EBS Volume Available for Use on Linux" What I'd now ...
glaucon's user avatar
glaucon
  • 253
1 vote
3 answers
1k views

Long running VMWare snapshots are bad.... but what about VMDKs on a ZFS\LVM snapshot?

The VMWare KB and multiple blogs state that long running snapshots are bad for both performance reasons and integrity. They have valid points. Granted this is not with ESXi but rather Workstation\...
VM_Storage_Inception's user avatar
VM_Storage_Inception
  • 263
1 vote
4 answers
2k views

What does an LVM2 Snapshot contain? [duplicate]

Everything I read makes me think an lvm snapshot is a direct copy of the logical volume that was snapshot(ed), but how can that be when it takes 10 seconds to snapshot a 90 gig logical volume? If I ...
user avatar
user160910
0 votes
2 answers
10k views

Vmware missing last snapshot data file what now?

Hi we had some problems with our server filling up because of snapshots then failing to turn on, I have managed to copy everything across and repair the snapshot descriptor files (hopefully). The ...
user964406's user avatar
user964406
  • 19
0 votes
1 answer
549 views

Why would deleting an incremental snapshot increase the space usage & cost? [closed]

Google Cloud Platform From the Google Cloud docs: https://cloud.google.com/compute/disks-image-pricing#persistent_disk_snapshots When you delete a complete or incremental snapshot, some of its ...
Rob Olmos's user avatar
Rob Olmos
  • 2,240
0 votes
2 answers
722 views

Question about Consolidate Helper - 0

Recently I had an issue where a virtual machine had ran out of space and was suspended, a restart was able to to fix the issue but when I SSH'd in I noticed there were two large files (both delta.vmdk ...
Toby's user avatar
Toby
  • 630
0 votes
0 answers
1k views

After I clear a large number of Snapshots (approximately 1500), FreeNAS 9.3 Web GUI displays "An error occurred." After two days

My FreeNAS 9.3 Web GUI crushed after I clear a large number of Snapshots (approximately 1500) And now, It only displays these words: An error occurred. Sorry, the page you are looking for is ...
陳敬翔's user avatar
陳敬翔
  • 41
0 votes
1 answer
235 views

LVM Snapshot confusion

I think I understand some of the lvm snapshot concept, but am confused about one last thing. After you take the snapshot, if you don't mount it, will it be active? What I really want to know is will ...
user avatar
user160910
0 votes
2 answers
751 views

VMWare old snapshot consolidation

I have been tasked to manage an old VMWare 4.0.1 installation, which is due to be replaced in the near future but it must be kept running at the moment. I immediately noticed that some virtual ...
shodanshok's user avatar
shodanshok
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