Vultr DocsLatest Articles

How to Create Snapshots on a Vultr Cloud Compute Instance

Updated on November 27, 2024

A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of the instance state that includes the file system and disk contents. Snapshots enable instant backups of an instance to enable data recovery in case of unexpected failures.

Follow this guide to create snapshots on a Vultr Cloud Compute instance using the Vultr Customer Portal, API, or CLI.

  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI

  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.

    Vultr Customer Portal

  2. Click your target instance to open its management page.

    View active instance subscriptions

  3. Navigate to the Snapshots tab.

    Snapshots Tab

  4. Enter a new descriptive label in the Label field and click Create Snapshot to take a new snapshot of your instance.

    Create Snapshot

  1. Send a GET request to the List Instances endpoint and note the target instance's ID in your output.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/instances" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  2. Send a POST request to the Create Snapshot endpoint to create a new snapshot of the instance.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/snapshots" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{
    "instance_id" : "<instance-id>",
    "description" : "<label>"
  }'

  1. List all instances available in your Vultr account and note the target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance list

  2. Create a new snapshot of the instance.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli snapshot create --id <instance-id>