Are snapshots and resize operatings using a system login?

I have a debian droplet I’m trying out(the smallest one-- the $5/mo one), and for security, I’ve disabled root logins over ssh, and I’ve also disabled password authentication over ssh. In addition, I immediately changed the root password on the server.

Today I decided I wanted to test out the functionality of resizing my droplet to a larger VM, so I shut it down(as root) and initiated a snapshot. The system has very low storage utilization(~6gb), yet it took a very long time to process the snapshot. Long enough(37m) to make me think that it spent most of the time just hanging. The web interface’s snapshot process is a black box affair, so it’s difficult to do anything but speculate as to what’s happening.

My only basis for comparison I have is that when I take snapshots of storage devices on my little server at home, it takes seconds-- not minutes --to run.

Are we to expect delays like this if we have our systems locked down like I do?