Deployment Snapshots¶

What are Deployment Snapshots?¶

Deployment snapshots are manual, on-demand snapshots of a deployment instance's persistent storage that you can use for disaster recovery. Snapshots capture the state of all backed-up volumes at the time of creation.

Key characteristics of deployment snapshots:

• Manual triggers: Create snapshots on-demand as part of your disaster recovery preparedness and runbooks.
• Cross-region disaster recovery: Copy snapshots to a different region than the source deployment. This ensures that your data remains available even in the event of a total regional cloud outage.
• Independent lifecycle: Unlike automated backups that are cleaned up automatically, manual snapshots are persistent. They remain in your account until you explicitly delete them.
• Multi-cloud support: Snapshots are supported on AWS, GCP, and Azure across all storage types that support backups (EBS, Persistent Disk, Azure Disk).

Deployment snapshots are most useful when you want a durable recovery artifact for disaster recovery that you control, separate from automated schedules and retention policies.

For automated backups and point-in-time recovery, see Backup and Point-in-time Restore (PITR).

Cloud Provider Support¶

Capability	AWS	GCP	Azure
Create snapshot
Same-region restore
Cross-region copy
Cross-region restore

Managing Deployment Snapshots¶

You can manage deployment snapshots through multiple interfaces:

• Operations Console UI: Access snapshot management from two levels:
  • Deployment Snapshots page: View and manage snapshots across a service environment.
  • Instance Snapshots tab: From a deployment instance details view, manage snapshots for that specific instance.
• Customer Portal: If enabled, your customers can create and manage snapshots from the Customer Portal.
• API/CLI: Use the Omnistrate API or CTL for programmatic snapshot management and automation.

For operational visibility (including progress and troubleshooting), see Workflows.

Supported Operations¶

Deployment snapshots support the following operations:

All snapshot operations run as workflows, so you can track progress and troubleshoot issues through the workflow details view. In cross-region scenarios, both snapshot creation and snapshot copy can incur inter-region transfer and storage costs.

Create a snapshot¶

Create a snapshot when you want a durable recovery artifact for a deployment instance. Snapshots remain available until you explicitly delete them.

To create a snapshot:

1. Navigate to the deployment instance in the Operations Console.
2. Open the Snapshots tab.
3. Click Create Snapshot.
4. Optionally, select a destination region for cross-region disaster recovery. If you don't select a destination region, the snapshot is created in the same region as the instance.
5. Confirm the operation.

Copy a snapshot¶

Copy a snapshot to make it available in another region. After copying, you can restore from the copied snapshot in the destination region. This is the foundation for cross-region disaster recovery.

To copy a snapshot:

1. Navigate to the Deployment Snapshots page or the instance's Snapshots tab.
2. Select the snapshot you want to copy.
3. Click Copy and select the destination region.
4. Confirm the operation.

Restore from a snapshot¶

Restore recovers a deployment instance to the state captured by a specific snapshot. Restore is only possible in the same region as the snapshot.

To restore from a snapshot:

1. Navigate to the snapshot you want to restore from.
2. Click Restore.
3. Confirm the operation.

If you need to restore in a different region, copy the snapshot to that region first, then restore from the copy.

Delete a snapshot¶

Delete a snapshot when you no longer need it. Because snapshots are persistent by design, periodically review and delete snapshots you no longer need to reduce storage costs.

Deletion is permanent. After you delete a snapshot, you cannot restore from it.

Cross-Region Disaster Recovery¶

Snapshots enable cross-region disaster recovery on all supported cloud providers (AWS, GCP, and Azure). Use this workflow to prepare for regional outages:

1. Create a snapshot of the deployment instance in its source region.
2. Copy the snapshot to a target region in a different geographic area.
3. In a disaster scenario, restore from the copied snapshot in the target region.

Snapshot-on-Delete¶

You can configure your SaaS Product to automatically create a final snapshot before a deployment instance is deleted. This provides a safety net against accidental data loss.

To enable this behavior, set snapshotBeforeDeletion: true in the backup configuration of your service specification:

=== "Docker Compose"

x-omnistrate-capabilities:
  backupConfiguration:
    backupRetentionInDays: 7
    backupPeriodInHours: 24
    snapshotBeforeDeletion: true

For more details, see the Backup Configuration section in the Compose specification.

Monitoring Snapshot Operations¶

Omnistrate provides alarm events for snapshot operations. You can subscribe to these events to monitor the health of your snapshot workflows:

For details on configuring alarm notifications, see Alarms.