Snapshots and Backups

Snapshots vs backups

• Snapshot — fast restore point on same host. Good before upgrades, driver installs.
• Backup — fuller copy to backup storage. Needs backup storage configured or it fails closed.

Both list under instance Snapshots / Backups tabs.

Create

1. Open instance → Snapshots → Create. Name it (pre-cuda-upgrade).
2. Wait for task 202 → done. Don't start long job until done.

Rollback

VM must be stopped first or rollback returns 409. Then:

1. Stop instance.
2. Snapshot → Rollback.
3. Start instance, verify with nvidia-smi.

Backups restore similarly but slower — plan downtime.

Delete old points

Stale snapshots eat disk. Delete after run succeeds. Ownership enforced: backup from another VM returns 404 by design.