How to Backup your Data with Snapshots

Snapshot Overview

Important: These procedure applies only to Bare Metal Instances. On all other instance types, you should use the backup feature instead.

A snapshot is a full-volume copy of your server and its data. Snapshots are perfect if you want to recover a server from a previous state. They are stored in our secure data centers.

Potential uses:

• Recovering volume data
• Creating copies from a volume

Requirements

• You have an account and are logged into console.scaleway.com
• You have configured your SSH Key
• You have a running Cloud Instance

Archiving an Instance

Note: To ensure data integrity, it is required to power off your bare metal instance prior to taking a snapshot. On Virtual Cloud instances, Hot Snapshots are available and this step can be skipped.

In the Compute section, select an instance from which you want to make a snapshot. Note that the server must be powered off beforehand. To power off a running server you have two options:

Option 1: On the instance list page, use the dropdown menu next to a server to select Power Off.

Option 2: On the instances overview page, click on the Power off button at the top of the page.

Once your instance is powered off you can snapshot the volumes.

Creating a Snapshot

1 . In the Snapshots tab, hover over the + which displays a Create a Snapshot.

2 . Click on Create a Snapshot. The Create a Snapshot page displays.

3 . Enter a name for your snapshot and select a volume from the drop down list.

4 . Click Create a new snapshot

The snapshot is added to your snapshot list.

Creating a Snapshot from an Image

1 . In the Snapshots tab, click on the … next to the snapshot to be used. A dropdown menu displays:

2 . Select Image from Snapshot. The Create Image from Snapshot pop-up displays.

3 . Enter a name for your image and choose an architecture of the image (arm, arm64 or x86_64).

Important: Make sure that the architecture selected corresponds to the system architecture of the snapshot.

4 . Click Create image from snapshot.

The image is added to your image list.

Creating a Snapshot from a Volume

1 . In the Snapshots tab, click on the …. A dropdown menu displays.

2 . Select Volume from Snapshot. The Create Volume from Snapshot pop-up displays.

3 . Enter a name for your volume and choose a storage type.

4 . Click Create Volume from snapshot. The image is added to your image list.

Creating an Instance from a Snapshot

In the previous step, we created a snapshot. We will create a new instance based on the snapshot we took previously.

1 . In the Compute section of the management console, click + Create an Instance

2 . In the Choose an Image section, select the My snapshots tab.

3 . In the list, select the snapshot from which you want to create your new server.

4 . Input the rest of the required information and click Create a new server. This action starts your server. In a few seconds, your server will be ready to use.

All data stored when you create your snapshot will be present on this new server.

Note: You can also choose an image as your snapshot. In the Choose an Image section, select My images.