(Supported for the following hypervisors: XenServer, VMware vSphere, and KVM)

CloudStack supports snapshots of disk volumes. Snapshots are a point-in-time capture of virtual machine disks. Memory and CPU states are not captured.

Snapshots may be taken for volumes, including both root and data disks. The administrator places a limit on the number of stored snapshots per user. Users can create new volumes from the snapshot for recovery of particular files and they can create templates from snapshots to boot from a restored disk.

Users can create snapshots manually or by setting up automatic recurring snapshot policies. Users can also create disk volumes from snapshots, which may be attached to a VM like any other disk volume. Snapshots of both root disks and data disks are supported. However, CloudStack does not currently support booting a VM from a recovered root disk. A disk recovered from snapshot of a root disk is treated as a regular data disk; the data on recovered disk can be accessed by attaching the disk to a VM.

A completed snapshot is copied from primary storage to secondary storage, where it is stored until deleted or purged by newer snapshot.