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hunky
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hunky

How long does snapshot takes to create ?

September 15, 2014 13.2k views

It seems its taking well over 45 mins, still the snapshot is getting created.. Its bit too longer for a production environment to stay offline..

How long does it take to create a snapshot ??

1GB droplet having around 12% of used disc ??

Server is offline for well over 45 mins as the snapshot keeps showing processing !!!

I dont even see any option to cancel the process and start the server :( any one knows how to stop the snapshot creation process so that the server can be taken back online ??

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17 Answers
info101261 October 9, 2014

FYI - 20GB in AMS1 took 9mins

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TenHourGuy October 7, 2015

Before taking snapshots, I'd recommend getting rid of as much rubbish as possible, just due to how ridiculous the waiting times can be. Not only is your server down, money is being taken out of your pocket too. But yeah, fairly normal for it to sometimes take ages, particularly at peak times.

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Zonax7100 January 2, 2016

Same in 2016... It's still really slow...

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tomw August 25, 2016

I started looking for this answer after I started taking a snapshot which is a shame. 100g android build environment SGP1. 45 min so far. Cancel would be a really useful option.

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larry September 15, 2014

It sounds like something is stuck. The control panel may be out of sync as well. If you have logged out of the control panel and logged in with no change, it is time to submit a support ticket.

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  • hunky September 15, 2014

    I too thought that and created a support ticket, but few mins later I found the job done notification and it seems Nothing was stuck..

    System just took 55 mins to create a snapshot of 3.6GB of data !!!

    DO guys seriously needs to look into it as its far to longer to sustain the down time :( for production servers !!

  • yoosefi September 15, 2014

    This is good to know, I have a snapshot of about 9GB going and I was getting worried since the progress bar never moves. I even opened a ticket. I'll just let it run its course I guess.

  • hunky September 15, 2014

    For test setup, time wont be a factor but when taking snapshot of production servers, these time frames are huge !!

    If 3.6 GB takes 1 hr, then larger droplets will take a lot of time, and 2/3 hrs of down time for a production website is quite a lot :(

  • larry September 15, 2014

    They don't usually take that long. My snapshots (filling about 23% of a 512 MB droplet's disk space - whatever that amounts to) take at most a few minutes to complete.

vitaly May 14, 2015

Same thing. It's down for 15 minutes already and still spinning.
They should have an option to cancel the process.
It's not the first time this happens to me.

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Framerate August 29, 2015

21G in LON1 took 50 minutes!

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indigo7333 December 29, 2015

Same in 2015, didn't know the snapshot is going to take so much time.

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shanjie February 13, 2016

30GB, 40mins

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natxoasenjo February 26, 2016

With such fast disks (ssds all over the place), why does it take so long to create the snapshots? Are you using qemu snapshots?

Maybe using some cow storage technology (Netapp or any ZFS enabled provider) would greatly improve the snapshotting experience ;-)

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TenHourGuy April 16, 2016

Really liking this new snapshot update. Now I can see a snapshot of 47.26GB took 39m53s to be created in the AMS3 region. :D

Not too bad for testing and such, I suppose. They really ought to add in the option to make your droplet automatically destroy itself after having an image taken instead of just booting up again since it's no doubt common to take a snapshot before getting rid of a droplet. Would save me a few hours sleep waiting just to save a few pennies for the snapshot to finish being taken.

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KeitelDOG April 19, 2016

I have a staging server with around 15G (14GB of musics) (400MB (3,000 files) pictures), it took 19 minutes 56 seconds! May be cause music files copy are faster.
Anyway Good job DO Teams, that's great even for Production.

BTW: Droplet is $5/month -> 512MB and 20GB

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simPod September 11, 2016

Same here, I wish I read this before I clicked Create snapshot...

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  • developcents October 1, 2016

    Same story. Digital Ocean needs to make it clear that snapshots take a long time to complete, and they need to provide an option to cancel the snapshot.

hristo8d79da0f9 October 26, 2016

Joining the surprised here. Creating a snapshot of 512 MB Memory / 20 GB Disk / AMS2 took 27 minutes.

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pandalion98 February 23, 2017

I just finished an online snapshot on SGP01 and it took 17 minutes (20GB).

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dave186771 May 1, 2017

Well I was taking the snapshot in order to copy the image and spin up another server with it... but after waiting and then seeing this thread (with no DO response!) I'll just setup the new box w/ Linode instead.

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washingtonian May 4, 2017

23.3GB in NYC1 took 25 minutes.

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