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Coming from Hyper-V and VMWare background (limited), I would like to know if the concept of VM snapshot exists in SoftLayer. What is the direct equivalent or the closest approach to point-in-time restores if their VMs?

I did try to research, but all references I am finding point to disk space management concepts. While main moving part in Hyper-V and VM the restore is "Freezing" the vHD states and starting to write into "incremental" files, the snapshotting concept there is impelemented at VM level, not strictly at disk management. So in that sense - is there anything I missed in SoftLayer?

EDIT

This is the closest concept that I found (at storage level)

We are using their Citrix XenServer offering.

G. Stoynev
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  • Please read through the "Help" link above. "Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do." What is your goal - what problem are you solving, what's your desired end-state? – mfinni Apr 19 '17 at 16:54
  • Also, please be specific about what you're talking about. Softlayer is a brand, not a product. They have several different virtualization products - which one are you using or considering for use? – mfinni Apr 19 '17 at 17:01
  • Thanks. I will find out the flavor/offering we're using and update the question. As to the Help link, being an experienced SO user, I did read the Help and I do think I am on the right side of the borderline with the specifics I have provided :-) – G. Stoynev Apr 19 '17 at 17:10
  • You haven't described the problem you're trying to solve. Are you trying to make snapshots so you can rollback a change? Are you trying to take backups? – mfinni Apr 19 '17 at 17:44
  • I am trying to create a restore point-in-time. But regardless of how I want to use the feature, my question is specific - does an equivalent to Hyper-V and VMWare feature exist? (And not "how do I accomplish such-and-such") – G. Stoynev Apr 19 '17 at 20:41

1 Answers1

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Looking through their KB, it does not seem like the Virtual Servers (Xen) offering will let you do snapshots in the control panel. This is based on my reading of their docs, not on personal experience. It seems that if you have their VPN product, then you could connect to your VMs with the management console on your own machine, and see if you can do snapshots that way. From my reading, it's unclear if this is only for the VMware offering, or also Xen.

They make it fairly explicit that they also don't back up your data, that you need to do that on your own with 3rd party software, or purchase their eVault product. I'm sure that on the backend, they implement that with hypervisor-appropriate VM-level snapshots, because that's the only way to get application-consistent backups from a powered-on guest. So if you took an eVault backup, you'll have a restorable copy of your machine.

mfinni
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