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Overview

A snapshot is a copy of your server’s disk taken whenever you choose. You can restore it later over the same server, or over any other server on your account, including one in a different location. Snapshots are kept until you delete them. Snapshots are kept in snapshot storage, which you buy separately from your server and pay for by the GiB. One storage can hold snapshots of any number of servers, and you can buy as many storages as you need. Snapshots are not yet available in every location. If a server’s location does not support them, its Snapshots tab will say so.

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Snapshots vs. Backups

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Buying Snapshot Storage

Open our VPS portal at https://vps.advinservers.com and click “Snapshots” in the left navbar. Click “Buy Storage”, choose a size and a name, and confirm. The dialog shows the price before you pay. Storage is paid from your account credit, so you may need to add funds first. You can resize a storage at any time from its row menu:
  • Growing a storage is charged at a prorated rate for the rest of the billing period.
  • Shrinking a storage refunds the prorated difference to your account credit. The new size must still fit every snapshot in it.

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Taking a Snapshot

Navigate to the “Snapshots” tab on your server and click “Take Snapshot”. Give it a name, pick the snapshot storage to keep it in, and click “Take snapshot”. Before you confirm, the dialog calculates how much space the snapshot will use. A snapshot counts as the data actually written to your server’s disk, not the full disk size. For example, a 100 GiB disk with 12 GiB of data uses about 12 GiB of storage. Storages without enough room are greyed out. Your server keeps running while the snapshot is taken, but it is locked in the control panel until the snapshot finishes. You cannot start, stop, reinstall or restore the server during this time. Only the server’s primary disk is included in a snapshot. Additional disks are not captured. A snapshot cannot be taken while another operation is running on the server, such as a nightly backup, a migration or an upgrade. Please wait for it to finish and try again.

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Restoring a Snapshot

Navigate to the “Snapshots” tab of the server you want to restore onto. This tab lists every snapshot on your account, whichever server it was taken from. Open the menu on the snapshot, click “Restore”, and type the server’s name to confirm. Restoring will force-stop the server and overwrite it with the snapshot. Anything written to the server since the snapshot was taken is lost. If you might need the current data, take a new snapshot of the server first. A restore can take 1-2 hours, and the server is unavailable until it finishes. Once it is done, the server’s disk is grown to match its plan if needed, and the server is started automatically. You can restore a snapshot onto a server in another location, and snapshots of a server you have since cancelled can still be restored onto your other servers.

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Deleting and Moving Snapshots

To delete a snapshot, open its menu on a server’s Snapshots tab or on the storage’s page and click “Delete”. Deleted snapshots cannot be recovered, and their space is freed straight away. From a storage’s page, you can also move a snapshot into another of your storages with “Move to storage”. This is instant, as long as the other storage has room for it.

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Cancelling Snapshot Storage

A storage must be empty before it can be cancelled. Delete or move every snapshot in it first, then click “Cancel storage” from its row menu. You can cancel at the end of the billing period, or immediately with the unused days refunded to your account credit. If a storage’s invoice goes unpaid, the storage is suspended. While it is suspended, its snapshots cannot be restored, moved or deleted until the invoice is paid. If it remains unpaid, the storage is terminated and every snapshot in it is permanently deleted.

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Troubleshooting

If a snapshot shows as “Unavailable”, it can no longer be found on our backup servers and cannot be restored. Please open a ticket and we will help you recover your server where possible.