Snapshots and copies of your VPS

What you get: a step back before touching something delicate, and a copy of each night just in case today goes wrong.

Before we start: they are not the same

They are confused all the time and are used for different things:

Instant - a photo of the current disk, taken by you. It takes seconds to take and seconds to look back at it. It’s for “I’m going to update and I want to be able to go back”. You can only have two per machine.
Backup - it is created automatically every night and stored outside the machine. It is for “it worked yesterday” and for when the entire disk has gone to beyond recovery.

Take a snapshot before touching something

Open your VPS and, in More actions, Snapshots.
Give it a name. Letters, numbers and underscores, up to 40, starting with a letter. Something that tells you when it was: antes-de-actualizar.
If you mark Also save the memory, save the open programs as they are. It takes longer and takes up more space; for a normal update it is not necessary.

To return to it, Restore in its row. The warning is clear: “The disk returns to the state it was on [date]. Anything that has changed since then is lost”.

Go back to the copy of one night

In More actions, Backups.
Choose the date and press Restore.

Read the entire notice before, because there is a part that is overlooked: “the password, SSH keys and users inside the machine also return to those of that date”. If you changed the password after that copy, after restoring it becomes the same as before.

Retrieve a single file without restoring anything

It’s almost always what you really want. In the copy queue, Browse and download: you insert the disk and download the file or folder to .zip, up to 100 MB per download. The machine continues to work and nothing is touched.

How to check it worked

After restoring, enter via SSH or the console and check something specific that you know has changed: the date of a file, a row in the database, the version of a program. That the machine boots up does not prove that what you wanted has been restored.

Common problems

«Each server can have 2 snapshots»: It’s the limit, and it’s on purpose: snapshots live on the shared fast disk and no plan includes them. Delete the oldest one and make a new one.
I restored a snapshot and the server has less memory or less CPU: The snapshot also saved the configuration of that day. We fixed it ourselves in a moment, putting back what you have contracted now. If it asks you to restart, restart it.
I restored a copy and I can no longer log in with my password: That’s what the message warned: users and keys return to those of that date. Log in through the console with the password you had then and change it again.
«There is already a restoration underway of this machine»: Only one thing is restored at a time. Wait: we will notify you in the notifications when it is done.
The download says it’s too big: The download limit is 100 MB. Go into the subfolders and download them separately, or write to us and we will prepare the whole thing for you.
I can see the copies but I cannot restore or download them: Opening a copy means entering the machine’s disk, with its passwords and keys inside. That’s why only the person who administers the account can do it.
I don’t get any copies and the machine has been running for months: If we cannot safely determine which machine each copy is from, we prefer not to show any before showing you another one. Write to us and we will look into it.
I deleted the VPS and I want to recover it: When you delete a VPS, its disks, snapshots and copies are also deleted. That’s why the panel makes you type the name by hand to confirm it. There is no going back.
Is a snapshot enough for me as a backup?: No. It lives in the same place as the machine: if the disk is lost, both are lost. The copy from the night is indeed out. Use the snapshot to undo a change, not to sleep soundly.