Compute Engine Storage – Persistent Disk Snapshots
Why are Persistent Disk Snapshots required ?
- Snapshots are required to periodically backup data from your zonal or regional persistent disks
Can we create Snapshots when the VMs are in running State ?
- Yes, we create snapshots from disks even while they are attached to running VM Instances
Are Snapshots Multi-regional ?
- Snapshots can be Regional and Multi-regional
- Snapshots are global resources so you can use them to restore data to a new disk or instance within the same project
- You can also share snapshots across projects
How frequent we can take Snapshots ?
- RECOMMENDED: Take snapshots once an hour
- SUPER BEST RECOMMENDED: If there is no need for an hourly snapshots, plan for taking snapshots during non-business hours (once or twice per day). Why? – Even though disk volume is available during the snapshot creation time, there will be a slighter performance degradation.
- Snapshot Schedules: We can create a Snapshot Schedule at hourly, daily and weekly.
Are Snapshots incremental ?
- Yes. We don’t lose data by deleting older snapshots
- RECOMMENDED: Delete older snapshots
- Configure Deletion Rule to delete older snapshots using Snapshot schedules
What are advantages of Incremental Snapshots ?
Snapshots are incremental by default which helps us
- To avoid billing you for redundant data
- To minimize use of storage space
- To decrease snapshot creation latency
- However, to ensure the reliability of snapshot history, a snapshot might
- occasionally capture a full image of the disk.
If you are repeatedly creating persistent disk from snapshots
- Create an image from snapshot and use the image to create VMs.
- This approach will be faster and saves networking costs.
