VM Snapshot VS Saveas

Wondering if someone can clarify something for me please.

Within opennebula you can create snapshots and also save the disk image as via disksaveas.

I am looking at a way to store the current status of a couple of important VM’s for long term now I have reached a point where I am happy for them to be reverted back to if anything breaks.

Which is the best way to do this I know snapshots will bloat over time but when I use disk saveas it also says snapshot so wondeirng if this new image is still written to if I make changes to the live image.

If both ways bloat what is the best way to backup a VM as is e.g. whats the file location of the running VM and could I just back this up offisite for example.

Thanks

Hello @kingbuffalo

  • If you want to save the whole VM state you should use a system snapshot.
  • If you want to save just the disk of the VM, you can use a disk snapshot.

About the disk-save-as, it will save the current disk as a new image, but if you make changes, those changes won’t be done in the image, so you will have to execute a new disk-save-as if you make some changes.

Thank you that makes perfect sense do you know where the disk save as will save to and in what format , I am trying to save this off-site via a Cron job

Hello @kingbuffalo

The image will save on your image datastore. And the format will be the same as the original image.