Snapshots

Snapshots allow you to save the state of a virtual machine for backup or templating purposes. For VMs installed from templates, live snapshots can be performed where the VM does not have to be rebooted; on operating installs from ISO, only cold snapshots are supported (snapshot after VM is turned offline).

Snapshots are billed hourly for storage space only, at $0.03 per GB per month (the first 20 GB of usage is currently free, but this is subject to change).

Creating a snapshot

Creating a snapshot in Luna Node Dynamic is easy. Simply go to the Virtual Machines sidebar entry, select your VM, and enter a snapshot label in the snapshot box. You may want to run sync before snapshotting.

If you are snapshotting a VM that was installed from an ISO image, you will need to shut down the VM before snapshotting. You will also need to have the VM adjusted so that it is set to boot to the first disk and not the CD-ROM (this is accomplished by selecting swap boot order).

Note: templates come with software called cloud-init installed that sets up SSH configuration, network interface settings, user accounts, hostname, partitions, and various other settings on the first boot. If you want a pure clone the VM, then you can remove cloud-init before taking the snapshot (apt-get/yum remove cloud-init); however, you will generally need to reconfigure the network settings on virtual machines booted from such a snapshot. See the next section for details on how to use a cloud-config startup script to change the password to something you want.

Provisioning from the snapshot

You can provision new instances from the snapshot, or re-image existing instances using the snapshot.

Replicating images between regions

Images are stored separately on each region. However, you can replicate a snapshot to another region by selecting the image from the Images sidebar tab, and then scrolling down to the image replication tool. Keep in mind that you will be billed for the storage in both regions (although you do have 20 GB free storage per region).