Introduction

This article explains snapshot management in the Webdock Control Panel, including how snapshots work, when to use them, how to perform a restore operation, and how snapshots can be reused as base images for new servers.

Why Use Snapshots?

Snapshots are point-in-time backups of the complete state of your server.

Snapshots allow you to make changes to your server while preserving a known working state, enabling rollback if needed.

If a system or package upgrade causes unexpected issues, snapshots allow you to restore the server to a previous stable state.

Snapshot Management

The snapshot management screen allows you to create and restore snapshots. It also displays existing snapshots, their time of creation, and available actions such as delete and protect.

The system provides a total of eight snapshots per server. Two snapshots are generated daily, three are generated weekly, and three are user-created snapshots. User-created (manual) snapshots can be triggered at any time to capture the current state of the server.

The shield icon marks a manually created snapshot as protected, which exempts it from the automatic deletion after six months. You can have as many protected snapshots as you have servers.

Note: How you distribute the usage is up to you. If you have four servers, you can use all four protections on one servers snapshots, or divide them between multiple servers.

To restore a server, click the ‘Pick a Snapshot’ button in the snapshot management screen and select the desired snapshot.

To learn more about the technical aspects and performance of snapshotting, see this article.

Other Uses of Snapshots

• Snapshots can be used in three ways: restore a previous state of the same server, restore a snapshot from another server within the same account, or use a snapshot as a base image when creating a new server.
• Snapshots can be used to create staging environments by duplicating a production server state. For example, create a new server from a production snapshot, apply and test your changes on it, and if successful, apply them to production. You can remove the staging server afterward to avoid unnecessary billing.

Note: When restoring a snapshot from another server, credentials and certain configuration settings (such as database and FTP passwords) are not transferred, requiring manual reconfiguration. This may affect Webdock management features. Due to those limitations, cross-server restores are primarily intended for updating server setups rather than full replications or migrations.

Conclusion

Snapshots are a core reliability feature that enable safe testing of changes and failure recovery.