VM Snapshots and Restores

Complete guide to VM snapshot and restore operations in VergeOS including scheduled and manual snapshots, quiesced capture, restoring from system snapshots, overwrite restores, and clone restores.

Virtual machine protection in VergeOS is built on a flexible snapshot framework that supports system‑wide recovery as well as targeted VM‑level protection. VMs can be safeguarded through Full System snapshots, Partial System snapshots, or individual VM snapshots, each offering different levels of granularity, quiescing options, and restore capabilities. Together, these mechanisms allow administrators to balance broad disaster‑recovery coverage with workload‑specific protection needs.

Snapshot Methods Overview

Snapshot Method	What It Captures	Restore Capability	Quiesced Option	Typical Use Case
Full System Snapshot	Entire system: all tenants, all VMs, all settings	Restore entire system or restore individual VMs (crash‑consistent)	No	System‑wide protection, DR recovery points
Partial System Snapshot	Only VMs/tenants included by tag rules in the profile period	Restore included VMs	Yes (if quiesce tag is set) otherwise crash‑consistent	Higher‑frequency or longer‑retention protection for selected workloads
Individual VM Snapshot (scheduled via VM snapshot profile or taken manually)	A single VM	Restore that VM	Yes (if selected)	Per‑VM protection, ad‑hoc snapshots before maintenance or changes

Quiesced Snapshots

The quiesce option provides an application-consistent snapshot of a running VM in which the system freezes the filesystem and flushes write buffers; additionally, VSS writers are invoked for VSS-aware applications (Windows VMs) to prepare for the snapshot. The Quiesce option can be selected when taking a manual snapshot and can be enabled within the snapshot profile for automated snapshots.

Scheduled VM-level Snapshots

By default, VM-level snapshots are not configured (VM Snapshot Profile setting="--None--").

1. From the VM dashboard, click Edit on the left menu.
2. In the Snapshot profile field, select the desired profile from the dropdown list. Instructions for configuring snapshot profiles can be found here: Snapshot Profiles (Snapshot Scheduling).
3. Click Submit at the bottom of the page.

Take a Manual Snapshot of a VM

1. From the VM dashboard, select Snapshots on the left menu.
2. Click Take Snapshot on the left menu.
3. Enter a Name for the snapshot (required).
4. Enter a Description (optional).
5. The Quiesce option can be selected to freeze disk activity while the snapshot is being taken. This provides application-consistent backups for VMs. The VM Guest Agent must be installed and registered on VM for quiesced snapshots.
6. In the Expires field, select/enter date and time for expiration.
7. Click Submit at the bottom of the page.

Consider vSAN space when selecting snapshot expirations

Snapshots held for long periods can have a significant effect on vSAN space; initially, source and snapshot are the same and thus have no impact on storage utilization; however, as source data diverges more from the snapshot data, there is less deduplication between the two and therefore more vSAN utilization. The Never Expire option should not be used unless necessary.

Restore an Individual VM from System Snapshot

Restoring VMs from a System Snapshot

To restore an individual VM from a system snapshot, it must first be imported from the system snapshot as detailed below. To restore from an individual VM snapshot, skip the import section of instructions and continue to Restore Overwrite -OR- Restore to a Clone instructions. Multiple VMs can be restored from system snapshot simultaneously from the System Snapshots Dashboard (System > System Snapshots > select the snapshot > View VMs)

Import VM Snapshot from a System Snapshot (to make it available for a VM restore)

1. From the VM dashboard select Snapshots from the left menu.
2. Click System Snapshots on the left menu.
3. Click to select desired system snapshot.
4. Click Import VM Snapshot on the left menu.
5. *Name, Description, and Expiration fields will default to the values from the system snapshot; if desired, change values for this import of the VM snapshot. Changes made will only apply to the VM snapshot import and will not affect the underlying system snapshot.
6. Click Submit to continue.
7. A message should appear stating the import process has begun. Click the Ok button to acknowledge.
8. When the imported VM snapshot appears in the list, it can be selected to use for restore.

Restore a VM Snapshot (to overwrite existing current version of VM).

1. *Power off the source VM. Use proper guest OS and application shutdown procedures whenever possible.
2. Consider taking a temporary snapshot of the VM right before restoring over it. This can allow taking the VM back to this point (before the restore), if necessary.
3. From the VM Dashboard, click Snapshots > Snapshots on the left menu.
4. A listing of available snapshots is displayed. Click to select the desired snapshot.*
5. Select Restore over Source from the left menu.
6. A Warning message will appear to caution that this will overwrite the existing Virtual Machine. Click the Proceed button to continue/ or Cancel to abort.
7. A message should appear stating the Restore process has begun. Click the Ok button to acknowledge the message.

Restore a VM Snapshot to a Clone

This option allows for using a snapshot to restore to a new VM instance, rather than overwrite the current VM.

When initiating VM clones, care should be taken with consideration to running multiple versions of a VM - as conflicts or problems can arise (e.g. same IP address, hostname, Mac Address, or multiple instances of guest applications.)

1. From the VM dashboard, click Snapshots > Snapshots on the left menu.
2. Click to select the desired snapshot in the listing.
3. Click Restore To New from the left menu.
4. The VM Name will default to the name of the snapshot + " restored". Change the name, if desired.
5. The Preserve MAC Addresses option will default to unselected, which means new MAC Address(es) will be auto-generated by the VergeOS system. The option can be enabled to keep the same MAC address(es) on the new VM. Caution should be used when selecting this option, as to avoid duplicate MAC addresses within the same network.
6. Click the Submit button to create the new VM.

Restoring Data from a VM Drive

To avoid issues with running both clone and source VM simultaneously, cloned VM drives can be mounted to a different VM in order to access restored data without powering on the clone: working on a separate VM, add a new drive, select the Clone Disk option and selecting the *.raw file from the restored VM drive.