By jeffcohen
I’d like to take a snapshot of an existing droplet to save me the time of reinstalling and configuring a new droplet from scratch. But I don’t want to copy the service definitions - or at least, I can’t have them start up automatically when I turn on the new droplet, because the new server will need different web server configurations and I don’t want duplicate background jobs to be running when I start the new Droplet.
Any advice?
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
Accepted Answer
Heya,
You can use any snapshot created from a Droplet to create new Droplets in any region where the snapshot is available. Following this page here:
https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/snapshots/how-to/create-and-restore-droplets/
Now, if you don’t want the services to start automatically, what you can do is disable them on the current Droplet, not stop but disable. The disable means that when you start your server those services won’t start automatically and then make the snapshot. After that re-enable them.
Also, even if those services start on the new Droplet it shouldn’t be a problem as there won’t be any DNS pointed to it YET.
Heya, @jeffcohen
Yes, you can snapshot the droplet, but to avoid conflicts on the new one, disable any services that auto-start before taking the snapshot:
Then take the snapshot. After creating the new droplet from it, adjust configs as needed before re-enabling services. This prevents issues like duplicate jobs or port conflicts.
Regards
Become a contributor for community
Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.
DigitalOcean Documentation
Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.
Resources for startups and SMBs
The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.
The developer cloud
Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.
Get started for free
Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*
*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.