xen-orchestra/rolling_snapshots.md

Rolling snapshots

Rolling snapshots are released since 4.2

This feature is close to Backups, but it creates a snapshot when planned to do so. It also handles the retention (to remove the oldest snapshot). This feature is very convenient to rollback to a previous state.

Warning: snapshots are not backups. All snapshots are on the same Storage than their original disk. If you lose the original VDI (or the SR), you'll lose all your snapshots.

Read more about it.

Advice: due to space usage, rolling snapshots should be avoided for large VMs on non-thin provisioned storages.

Example:

• schedule a nightly snapshot for a group of VM, let's say at 4:30 in the morning. With a max snapshot at 7, you'll have a week of revert possibility
• schedule a snapshot every week, but precisely Sunday at 11 PM, with 4 snapshots max. This will let you a month max of revert
• and so forth!