Restores from System Snapshots

Instructions for restoring from system snapshots including full system restore, selective tenant recovery, selective VM recovery, and accessing provider snapshots as a tenant.

Access System Snapshots from Your Provider/Host

This section of instructions apply to systems that are tenants themselves. If your provider has allowed it, you can request to access a snapshot of your environment from the provider's snapshots. Once requested, the snapshot is then available to use for restoring your individual VMs or complete environment.

1. Navigate to System > System Snapshots.
2. A listing of available snapshots is displayed; those displayed with a type of Provider are snapshots taken by the host. Click to select the desired provider snapshots (selected snapshots will show a checkmark).
3. Click Request From Provider on the left menu.
4. A confirmation dialog appears. Click Yes to continue pulling down the selected snapshots.
5. After the process is confirmed, transferring a snapshot down from the host can take 15 or more seconds. Once transferred the snapshot will now display with a type of Local with a green indicator; at this point it can be used for entire system, tenant, VM and volume restores from system snapshots as described below.

After a snapshot is requested from provider, and displays as type=Local, the snapshot can be edited to modify description and expiration. When changing expiration to a longer period it is important to consider effects on storage; long-term snapshots can substantially increase storage usage as data divergence between snapshot and live data increases over time.

---

Restore Entire System from Snapshot

This section provides instructions for restoring an entire system from within the VergeOS user interface.

Restore from Boot Menu

To restore a host system where the user interface is inaccessible, see the Knowledge Base article Restoring a VergeOS System from the Boot Menu.

System Requirements

• Full system restoration is only supported on the local System where the snapshot was taken. This operation cannot be used to restore one site over another (for example, you cannot restore Site A over Site B).
• Restoring a full system requires a complete reboot of all nodes.

Critical Impact

A full system restoration will revert all system components to the snapshot state, including:

• Virtual Machines
• Tenant configurations
• NAS data
• System settings
• All other system components

This is a comprehensive restoration that cannot be selectively applied to specific components.

1. Navigate to System > System Snapshots.
2. Click to select the desired snapshot from the list.
3. Select Restore from the left menu.
4. A warning message will appear to caution that this will overwrite the entire system.

   • By default, the option is selected to take a snapshot of the entire system before this restore. This allows for later reverting the system back to the state right before the restore operation, if needed.
   • By default, the option to Reboot all nodes after the restore is enabled. This will let the system handle the node reboots. Reboot of all nodes is necessary to complete the system restore.
5. Click the Proceed button to continue/ or Cancel to abort.
6. Another confirmation message will appear. To continue with the system restore, click the Proceed button or simply leave alone as the restore operation will continue in 60 seconds unless cancelled.

To cancel the operation, the Cancel button must be clicked within 60 seconds; otherwise, the restore operation will continue.

Restore Select Tenants from a System Snapshot

Full system snapshots include all tenants at the time the snapshot is taken. Partial system snapshots will only include tenants per the include/exclude tag configuration.

1. Navigate to System > System Snapshots.
2. Select the desired system snapshot from the list.
3. Click View Tenants on the left menu. You will be presented with a listing of all VMs contained in the selected system snapshot; this may take up to a few minutes.
4. Select the tenants to restore.
5. Click Recover on the left menu.
6. A Confirmation dialog will require you to click Yes to proceed (Click No if you wish to cancel the operation).
7. The snapshot tenant listing will display a checkmark and Complete message next to each tenant that was restored, with a message indicating the name of the new tenant instance created (original tenant name with a copy number appended) ex: "Restored to: tenantExampleCorp (1)".

An individual tenant can also be restored from the tenant dashboard, with a restore that overwrites the existing tenant, rather than creating a new tenant instance. Instructions can be found here.

Restore Select VMs from a System Snapshot (creates new VM instance(s))

Full system snapshots include all the host's VMs at the time the snapshot is taken. Partial system snapshots will only include VMs per the include/exclude tag configuration.

1. Navigate to System > System Snapshots.
2. Select the desired system snapshot from the list.
3. Click View VMs on the left menu. You will be presented with a listing of all VMs contained in the selected system snapshot; this may take up to a few minutes.
4. Select the VMs to restore.
5. Click Recover on the left menu.
6. A Confirmation dialog will require you to click Yes to proceed (Click No if you wish to cancel the operation).
7. The snapshot VM listing will display a checkmark and Complete message next to each VM that was restored, with a message indicating the name of the new VM instance created (original VM name with a copy number appended) ex: "Restored to: Windows2022SQL (0)".

An individual VM can also be restored from the VM dashboard; restoring from the VM dashboard allows the option to create a new VM instance or overwrite the current. Instructions can be found here.

Related Documentation

• VM Snapshots and Restores
• Tenant Restores
• Volume Snapshots and Restores