Lightspeed Cloud offers two complementary ways to protect your VMs: point-in-time snapshots and policy-driven backups. Snapshots are best for quick, manual checkpoints before a risky change; backups are better for ongoing, scheduled protection.
VM snapshots
A VM snapshot captures the state of a VM (and optionally all its attached disks) at a single point in time. Snapshots are quick to take and quick to roll back to - ideal right before an OS upgrade, application change, or configuration you might need to undo. Snapshots are stored on primary storage, so they aren't a substitute for offsite backup protection.
To take one, open the VM and choose Take Snapshot. You can revert a VM to a previous snapshot from the VM's snapshot list at any time.
Backup offerings
Backups are managed through a backup offering - a policy that defines how often backups run and how long they're retained. If your account has backup offerings available, you can assign one to a VM from its detail page. Once assigned, backups run automatically on the configured schedule without any further action from you.
Creating and restoring backups
You can also take an on-demand backup at any time, in addition to the scheduled ones from your backup offering. To restore, you have two options:
- Restore in place - roll the existing VM back to the state captured in the backup.
- Create a new instance from backup - spin up a brand-new VM from a backup, leaving the original untouched. This is useful for recovering an individual file without disrupting the live VM, or for cloning a known-good state.
Choosing between snapshots and backups
As a rule of thumb: use snapshots for short-lived, "just in case" checkpoints around a change you're about to make, and rely on a backup offering for ongoing protection against accidental deletion, corruption, or the need to recover from further back in time.