Managing snapshots

Snapshots are a useful feature of XenServer, as they provide a "point in time" disk state.

For example, imagine that you want to test an update of an application installed on your virtual machine. Using snapshot, you have the chance to revert to the pre-update state if the newly installed update doesn't work as expected.

Also, snapshots provide a fast way for creating templates that can be exported for backup purposes and can be used to quickly create new virtual machines.

When you create a snapshot, the result is a virtual machine very similar to a template. The VM snapshot contains all the VM configuration allowing you to export the snapshot and restore it if you need to.

You will play with snapshots many times! They give you a flexible modus operandi impossible to achieve when you have only physical servers.

In XenServer you can take three different types of VM snapshots:

• Disk-only: This type stores a VM's configuration information (metadata) and disks (storage) allowing...