WUYING Workspace:Use snapshots (public preview)

Background

A snapshot is a stateful data file of a disk at a specific time point. You can use snapshots to back up and restore data.

Snapshots can be manually or automatically created.

• Manually create snapshots: You can create a snapshot at a specific point in time based on your business requirements. When you create a snapshot, you can specify a disk scope. If you grant the local administrator permissions to an end user, the end user can create, restore, and delete snapshots on WUYING terminals.

• Automatically create a snapshot: By default, the system automatically creates a snapshot for the system disk and data disk of each cloud computer at 00:00 every day. The snapshot is retained for only three days and automatically deleted after three days. You can also create an automatic snapshot policy based on your business requirements. The system also automatically creates snapshots for cloud computers in the following scenarios:

  • For cloud computers to which an automatic snapshot policy is attached, the system automatically creates snapshots based on the points in time specified in the policy.

  • Before the administrator updates cloud computers or custom images, the system automatically creates snapshots. This way, the system can automatically roll back if the update fails. If the update succeeds, the system disk snapshot of the original cloud computers is deleted and the data disk snapshot is retained.

  • When you change the image of a cloud computer, the system automatically creates a snapshot if the image is a custom image that has been deleted. After the image is changed, the system automatically deletes the snapshot.

  • Before an end user updates a cloud computer on the Alibaba Cloud Workspace client, the system automatically creates a snapshot, which can be used to perform automatic rollback if the update fails. The system can create up to three snapshots for a cloud computer. The snapshots can be retained for only three days. When the three days elapse, the snapshots are automatically deleted.

Prerequisites

• Before you create a snapshot of a cloud computer, the cloud computer must be in the Running or Stopped state.

• Before you restore data from a snapshot, the cloud computer must be in the Stopped state.

Manually create a snapshot

1. Log on to the WUYING Workspace (Pro Edition) console.

2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Resources & Terminals > Cloud Computers.

3. In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.

4. On the Cloud Computers page, find the cloud computer that you want to manage, and use one of the following methods to create a snapshot:

   1. Click the ⋮ icon in the Actions column and click Create Snapshot.

   2. Click the ID of the cloud computer to go to the details page. Click the Snapshots tab and click Create Snapshot.

5. In the Create Snapshot panel, configure parameters and click Create Snapshot.

   Parameter	Description
   Disk	The disk that you want to back up. Valid values: System Disk and Data Disk, Only System Disk, and Only Data Disk.
   Snapshot Name	Enter a name that conforms to the naming conventions.
   Description	The snapshot description. Enter a description that meets the on-screen instructions.

   On the Snapshots page, you can view the creation progress of the snapshot. When the status of the snapshot changes from In Progress to Succeeded, the snapshot is created.

Create an automatic snapshot policy and associate it with cloud computers

After you create an automatic snapshot policy, you can associate the policy with cloud computers. Then, the system creates snapshots at specified points in time.

1. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Deployment > Snapshots.

2. In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.

3. On the Snapshots page, click the Automatic Snapshot Policy tab and click Create Policy.

4. In the Create Policy panel, configure parameters and click OK. The following table describes the parameters.

   Parameter	Description
   Policy Name	Enter a name that conforms to the naming conventions.
   Repeat Date	Select days in a week that you want the system to create snapshots.
   Created At	Enter or specify points in time (UTC+8) to automatically create snapshots in a day.
   Retention Period	Specify a period of time to retain snapshots. Valid values: 1 to 180. Unit: days. When the system creates up to 30 snapshots for a cloud computer, the system deletes the earliest snapshot to retain the latest snapshot.

5. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Resources & Terminals > Cloud Computers.

6. In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.

7. On the Cloud Computers page, find the cloud computer with which you want to associate an automatic snapshot policy, click the ⋮ icon in the Actions column, and then click Change Automatic Snapshot Policy.

8. In the Change Automatic Snapshot Policy panel, select a policy and click OK.

9. In the message that appears, click OK.

   After you associate the policy with the cloud computer, you can click the cloud computer ID. In the Basic Information section of the Cloud Computer Details tab, you can view the policy.

Restore data

When data on the cloud computer is lost due to system errors or misoperation, you can use snapshots to roll back disk data to a specific point in time.

1. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Resources & Terminals > Cloud Computers.

2. In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.

3. On the Cloud Computers page, find the cloud computer whose disk data you want to restore and click the cloud computer ID.

4. On the Snapshots tab, find the snapshot that you want to use and click Restore Cloud Computer in the Actions column.

   If the cloud computer is not stopped, a message appears. In the message, click OK. After the cloud computer is stopped, proceed as prompted.

5. In the Restore Cloud Computer panel, confirm the snapshot information and click Restore Cloud Computer.

   Important

   You can restore the data of a single disk each time. Do not perform other operations on the disk during the restoration. After the restoration is complete, the data of the disk is restored to the point in time when the snapshot was created.

   After the disk data is restored, you will receive a message to view the data restoration status.

Delete a snapshot

You can delete the snapshots that you no longer use. You can delete snapshots that are manually and automatically created. The system deletes automatically created snapshots after the snapshots reach the specified retention period.

You can delete a snapshot on the following console pages:

• Cloud Computers page

  1. On the Cloud Computers page, find the cloud computer whose snapshot you want to delete and click the cloud computer ID.

  2. On the Snapshots tab of the cloud computer details page, find the snapshot that you want to delete and click Delete in the Actions column. In the dialog box that appears, click Confirm.

• Snapshots page

  On the Snapshots page, find the snapshot that you want to delete and click Delete in the Actions column. In the message that appears, click Confirm.