Snapshots & Templates

Vapor allows you to capture the state of a Virtual Machine for backup, testing, or rapid provisioning.

Snapshots

A snapshot captures the exact state of a VM's disk (and optionally its RAM) at a specific point in time.

Creating a Snapshot

1. Navigate to a VM's detail page.
2. Go to the Snapshots tab.
3. Click Take Snapshot.
4. Provide a name and description. If the VM is running, you can choose to include the memory state (requires a compatible guest OS and QEMU agent).

Reverting

If an update fails or you need to roll back, you can select a previous snapshot and click Revert. The VM will be restored to the exact state it was in when the snapshot was taken.

WARNING

Snapshots are not a replacement for true backups. They rely on the underlying virtual disk structure. If the main virtual disk is corrupted, the snapshots may also be lost.

Templates

Templates allow you to create a "golden image" from an existing VM to quickly provision new, identical VMs.

Creating a Template

1. Ensure the source VM is powered off. (It is highly recommended to sysprep or cloud-init clean the VM before templating to remove unique identifiers).
2. On the VM detail page, click Convert to Template.
3. The VM will be locked and marked as a Template.

Deploying from Template

1. Go to Virtualization > Computes.
2. Click Deploy from Template.
3. Select the desired template.
4. Vapor will rapidly clone the template's disk image and provision a new VM. If the template was configured with cloud-init, Vapor will inject new network and user configurations during the first boot.