Create, Delete, or Revert a Snapshot of VM Instance

In Oracle Linux 9, Cockpit administrators can use the VM [name] page to create, delete, or revert a snapshot of the VM instance.

A snapshot is a copy of a virtual machine’s OS and applications at a particular moment in time.

What Do You Need?

The Cockpit web console must be installed and accessible.
For details, see these topics: Install and Enable Cockpit and Log in to the Cockpit Web Console.
The Cockpit-machines add-on application must be installed in the web console and the Oracle Linux virtualization packages must be installed and enabled on the host system.
For more information, see Install Cockpit-Machines and Enable Virtualization.
One or more virtual machine instances must exist on manged the host system and appear in the Virtual Machines page.

Steps

Using the Cockpit web console, follow these steps to manage snapshots associated with a VM instance.

In the Cockpit navigation pane, click Virtual machines.
The Virtual machines page appears.
In the Virtual machines page, click the name of the virtual machine of interest.
The Virtual machines [VM name] page appears.

In Virtual machines [VM name] page, navigate to the Snapshot section and perform any of the following actions:

Create

Perform these steps:

Click Create to take a snapshot of the VM instance current state.
In the dialog, specify the following:
- Name. Optionally accept the name provided or change it.
- Description. Optionally provide text about the snapshot.
Click Create.
The name of the newly created snapshot appears in the Snapshot section of the VM instance page.

Revert

Caution:

Restoring a snapshot affects the virtual hard drives that are connected to the VM instance. This means that all files changes that occurred after creating the snapshot are lost during the restore process. To avoid losing files and other changes, create a snapshot of the revised VM instance before restoring the VM to an earlier state.

Perform these steps:

Click Revert.
In the dialog, confirm the restore operation by clicking Revert.

Remove

Requirement: VM instance must be running to remove Snapshot.

Perform these steps:

Click Remove.
In the confirmation dialog, click Remove to delete the selected snapshot.