Manage VM snapshots

Introduction to VM snapshots

You can manage VMware snapshots in your virtual appliances, with easy-to-use buttons on the VM control panel. You can easily create a single snapshot before you make changes to your VM, and revert, or delete the snapshot afterwards. The platform only stores one snapshot at a time, but you can replace the current snapshot with a newer one. You can display VM snapshots on a widget on your Home view dashboard.

Take a snapshot of a VM

After you deploy a VM, to take a snapshot

1. Select the VM

2. On the VM control panel, click the camera take snapshot button.

   

3. Enter a Name and an optional Description. 

4. Optionally, if the VM is powered on:

   1. To store the memory as part of the snapshot, select Include memory

   2. To prepare the disk for a backup, select Quiesce file system, which requires VMware tools on the VM. 

5. Optionally, set a date and time to automatically delete the snapshot, which requires privileges to Manage snapshot autodelete and Manage snapshot autodelete expiry date.

6. Click Accept

After you create a snapshot, it will display on the Snapshots tab of the VM Details panel, and you can manage it from here. 

Revert to a snapshot

To revert to a snapshot and restore this previous VM state:

1. Select the VM 

2. On the VM control panel, click the camera back-arrow revert snapshot button.

3. Optionally, suspend (pause) the VM while reverting. If the snapshot contains the VM memory, it will revert to a paused state. If the snapshot doesn't contain the VM memory, it will always be powered off.

4. Confirm 

When you revert a VM to the snapshot, you will lose the current state of the VM because you will overwrite it with the snapshot.

Delete a snapshot

To delete a snapshot:

1. Select the VM

2. On the VM control panel, click the camera x delete snapshot button. 

3. Confirm

Replace the current snapshot

When you have a snapshot, if you take another snapshot, this will overwrite the existing snapshot because the platform only stores ONE snapshot at a time.

To replace the current snapshot:

1. Select the VM and take a new snapshot as described in Take a snapshot of a VM.

   

Display snapshots on the dashboard

To display snapshots on the dashboard,

1. Go to Home view

2. Edit a dashboard

3. Click Add widget

4. Select the widget for Virtual machine snapshots.

If the user has the privilege to View enterprise snapshots list, this widget will display all of the snapshots in the user's tenant.

To go directly to a VM with a snapshot, double-click on the snapshot entry in the list.