How to Configure Snapshots on your Cloud Server

Rackspace Cloud Servers give you the option to create both Scheduled and On-Demand snapshots. Although they incur storage and bandwidth charges when used with Cloud Files, the convenience of being able to restore saved images easily is well worth it.

Enabling scheduled imaging is quick and easy. Just follow these steps:

1. Log into your Control Panel and click on ‘Hosting’.
2. Click on ‘Cloud Servers’. Select the server you want to image from the list, and wait for the page to load.

3. Click on ‘Images’. To schedule regular snapshots to run automatically for your server, click ‘Enable Scheduled Imaging’.

4. You can choose to schedule daily snapshots, and pick a particular day for a separate weekly image to be run. When you’re done, click ‘Save Schedule’ to activate your scheduled imaging timetable.
5. Your images will be saved in Cloud Files. You will then begin paying a monthly storage charge, plus a charge for any bandwidth you use to access your image files. To turn off scheduled imaging, click ‘Disable’.

6. To create an image on-demand, click ‘New On-Demand Image’, enter your chosen image name, and click ‘Finish’. You can create an unlimited number of images using Cloud Files.

7. When your on-demand image is ready to run, its status on your control panel will change to ‘Available’.

8. By checking the boxes to the right of an available On-Demand image, you can choose to restore your server with that image – which means wiping all data and replacing it with the image – or delete the image.

Although scheduled snapshots can be a valuable backup tool, they shouldn’t be considered as a comprehensive solution. Because snapshots are taken while your server is active, it’s possible that your database could be processing tasks – such as writing data or saving files – which could cause data corruption within your image.
Instead, we’d recommend backing up databases using their own dedicated backup tool (such as mysqldump. Then, make a copy of the backup file elsewhere, in case you ever need to carry out disaster recovery.