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Rackspace Cloud Essentials 4 - Configuring Snapshots

  • Article ID: 300
  • Last updated on July 24, 2012
  • Authored by: Rackspace Support
  • (6 Comments)

NOTE: This article is written for our First-Generation Cloud Control Panel. A version of this article is also available for our Next-Generation Cloud Control Panel.

This article will walk you through configuring snapshot images on your Cloud Server.  Rackspace Cloud Servers include both Scheduled and On-Demand snapshots.  This is an optional service that will incur storage and bandwidth charges on Cloud Files, but the convenience of easily restoring from saved images is extremely valuable.  Enabling scheduled imaging is quick and easy.

  1. Log into Control Panel.
  2. Click on Hosting.
  3. Under Hosting click on Cloud Servers and choose the server you want to image by selecting it from the list of servers.  The server information page will load.

4.  Now click on the Images tab.  In order to enable regularly scheduled snapshots that run automatically for your server, press the button to Enable Scheduled Imaging.

5. Once enabled, you have the ability to schedule your snapshots to occur within a 2 hour window on a daily basis, as well as the day for a separate weekly image to be run.  Once set, press the Save Schedule button to activate Scheduled Imaging.  Your images will be saved in Cloud Files and will incur a monthly storage charge, plus bandwidth charges when the image file is accessed.  If you do not wish to use Scheduled Imaging, press the Disable button.

6. In addition to a scheduled image, you can create an On-Demand image at any time.  Press the New On-Demand Image button.  Create a unique name for the image, and click Finish.  You can store an unlimited amount of On-Demand images on Cloud Files.

7. Your On-Demand image will now be queued, and will run as soon as resources are available.

8. When your On-Demand image is ready the Status will change to available.  Clicking the check box to the right of an available On-Demand image will enable two different actions.  You can use this image to restore your server - this means wiping all data and replacing it with this image.  Or, you can also choose to Delete the On-Demand image.

Note:  Scheduled snapshots can be valuable tools but should not be considered a comprehensive backup solution.  Snapshots are taken while the server and its processes are active, meaning that a database might be writing data or files might be saving at the time of the snapshot.   That can lead to some data corruption within the image.

In particular, we recommend backing up databases with their own backup tool (like mysqldump) and copying the backup file elsewhere for the purposes of disaster recovery.

In the next article we will show you how easy it is to restore your server using a saved image.



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6 Comments

This article is only good if your Cloud Server has 80 GB of Disk. If you have any other configuration, how do you backup up your Cloud Server? I am looking at Jungle Disk and it seems that it will take over a day to backup up 100 GB of data, and unknown how long it would take to restore.

You need to provide guidance on viable backup options for larger virtual cloud servers.
By Stephen Ehrlich on Jul. 30, 2012

It would certainly be easier if our snapshot system supported larger disks yet, and I know there are engineers working on increasing the snapshot size limit. Unfortunately right now setting up your own automated, scripted system seems like the only way to go.

Your best bet is to identify key directories that you want backed up first to cut down on how much you're copying. From there you can do something like tar it up and send it to a backup location with a scheduled script or run [rsync](http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/index.php/Backing_up_your_files_with_rsync) periodically to sync the directories with a remote system.

You might look at a tool like [Duplicity](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/) to automate the process of making incremental backups. With that or regular rsync you can have it copy only the files that have changed, so after an initial large backup the rest of the backups should be much smaller in size.

If you combine incremental backups of just your data with a server build and configuration tool like [Puppet](http://puppetlabs.com/), [Chef](http://www.opscode.com/chef/), or [Blueprint](http://devstructure.com/) you should be able to create a replacement server quickly, then upload your data files from there.
By jered.heeschen on Jul. 30, 2012

Fine and dandy that you can create automatic backups. But if there's a way to overwrite old backups, I can't find it. My image list (and the bill for storage) keeps growing unless I prune old ones manually.

Seems like any reasonable solution for auto-backups should include a way to retain only a certain number of backup images. (I know it's not hard... I wrote my own that way when we were using EC2.) As it is, I now have to go in on a regular basis and delete old, no-longer-needed backup copies, and that's barely easier than just doing manual backups to begin with.

Am I missing something ??
By Anonymous on Jul. 30, 2012

a rate fo 15 cents per gigabyte per backup? If I have a 40Gb disk and only 10Gb of that is used by the operating system and database am I charged 40*15c = $6.00 or 10*15 = $1.50? per what? day?, month? i.e. how often does the charge recur?

thanks
By Jonathan Shaw on Jul. 30, 2012

I like to know how much will it cost Cloud? to save my pictures.
Sincerely,
Marina Poste
By Marina on Feb. 19, 2013

I'm afraid this isn't a service for sharing pictures, but for running services. You'll want a consumer service for picture sharing, perhaps something like flickr.com.
By jered.heeschen on Feb. 19, 2013

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