Support #439
Updated by Daniel Curtis over 10 years ago
While managing a small NodeJS instance, I decided to upgrade to the newest development branch of the software I am using. Since I am using VirtualBox, I chose take advantage of the snapshot capability; by taking a preliminary snapshot and then upgrading, I can then revert to that snapshot if the upgrade fails. It's the perfect server undo button. h2. Taking a snapshot of a VM * Take a snapshot of a virtual machine <pre> VBoxManage snapshot "examplevm" take "prebackup" --live </pre> *NOTE*: NOTE: The above command will take a live snapshot of the virtual machine, without interrupting any functions the VM is providing. The --pause command can be used to pause the VM while snapshotting. #* h2. After the snapshot creation is completed, you can power off the machine and restore it: <pre> VBoxManage snapshot "examplevm" restorecurrent </pre> h2. Revert Snapshot * To Discard current changes <pre> VBoxManage snapshot "examplevm" discardcurrent </pre> * Revert to last snapshot: <pre> VBoxManage snapshot "examplevm" discardcurrent </pre> * To see Snapshot information about a particular VM <pre> VBoxManage snapshot "examplevm" discard "prebackup" </pre> h2. Merging snapshots into a base VDI If there is a need to apply the changes made since the snapshot was taken, then merging the snapshot that was taken into the Virtual Disk Image used by the virtual machine is necessary. * To merge a snapshot into a VDI run: <pre> VBoxManage clonehd /full/path/to/{uuid-of-last-snapshot}.vdi thedisk-full.vdi </pre> So I should clonehd only the last snapshot, not every snapshot from the chain. And it is thousands percent faster. h2. Resources * https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html