Restore from snapshot?

[jwillis44]

Sorry about simple question but how do I restore a machine to state when snapshot was taken?

Thanks.

[jd_jedi]

Select the managed server.
Select Restore button.
Point to the file where the snapshot was saved.

Note : This restores the VMs in memory state.. it is assumed that the disk has not changed since the snapshot.

[jwillis44]

Ok, so that doesn't sound like what I'm use to, I'm coming from virtual box, use to be that I could take a snapshot, f around screw things up or whatever then go back to the snapshot and things would be all good? does xen/convirt have that same functionality?
Thanks!

[jd_jedi]

No. The current snapshot feature does not save disk. So it is more like save the VM state and start it later. The name is probably misleading.
Are you on Xen or KVM platform ? We will put this on this list of features requested.

/Jd

[jd_jedi]

Here is a related thread.
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/htm ... 00458.html

[chrb]

Argh! The company that I work for has just rejected KVM, libvirt and virt-manager because there is no snapshot feature (they went for VMware ESXi instead). I was hoping that convirt would have proper snapshots (like VirtualBox and ESXi) but is appears this is actually just a memory dump feature like virt-manager.

Dumping the memory but not the disk state is bad - if you ever restore from the same memory dump more than once and do anything that causes a write to the disk the filesystem will be corrupted. How can it be that two completely different KVM frontends both implement the same incomplete and dangerous "snapshot" behaviour? Snapshotting a VM should save the complete VM state, not just the memory.

[jd_jedi]

Your observation and frustrations are well placed.
The main problem is lack of mature/efficient "snapshotable" virtual disk formats one one hand and on the other, co-ordinating with high-end storage snapshoting mechanism. We are looking in to various options to support "correct" snapshot behavior.

[Christopher]

Hi jd_jedi,
I thought I was the only one who was getting this problem.
Thanks for sharing that informative link with everyone. I have bookmarked that link for future reference.
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