Question

Snapshot w/o downtime

Posted October 23, 2013 11.4k views
I have a 1gb droplet. I have automatic backups. I'd like to run a snapshot (to save a particular clean state), but I don't want downtime (it's my only production server). One post says that for a 1gb server you don't need to shut down, but I get: Droplet is currently on. Please power it off to run this event. Is there another way? I could use rsnapshot, but can I do a full system restore from an rsnapshot image? (that would be better, because I could save it on my large NAS). Thanks!
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ross_rosen
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10 answers
kamaln7 October 24, 2013
@Pablo: You can schedule it by setting up a cronjob that takes a snapshot of a droplet via the API.
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pablo October 25, 2013
Never thought of that, thanks! By chance, do you (or anyone else, for that matter) happen to have such a script -- so I can share it on: DigitalOcean User Projects | GitHub?
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pablo October 23, 2013
Why not schedule the snapshot for 2:00 AM on Saturday (or some other time whenever traffic is low)?
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ross_rosen October 24, 2013
Thanks pablo. I guess that would be ok, but it doesn't feel like the right thing to do (actually bring the production site down), and I figure there must be a way to do it live. I just need to find the way!
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pablo October 24, 2013
Don't you ever do any software upgrades and reboot your machine, anyways? That, too, would bring down your production site. I took a snapshot lastnight and it took a whopping 1 minute + 54 seconds -- not much of a sacrifice in exchange for the piece of mind that I can quickly spin up a new droplet should my production site ever become compromised (or, the more likely scenario, should I break something).

In the alternative, you could try an incremental, offsite backup w/either rsync or duplicity.
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kamaln7 October 24, 2013
Unfortunately it's not possible to take a snapshot of a droplet while it's powered on.
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pablo October 24, 2013
@Kamal,

Is it possible to "schedule" a snapshot?
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pablo October 27, 2013
@ross_rosen,

You may also want to check out How To Use Duplicity with GPG to Securely Automate Backups on Ubuntu.
How To Use Duplicity with GPG to Securely Automate Backups on Ubuntu
by Justin Ellingwood
Duplicity is a simple backup solution that can be used to backup data from a VPS instance to another VPS or a local machine. In this guide, we will demonstrate how to install duplicity on Ubuntu and configure it to perform automated backups.
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kamaln7 October 29, 2013
Pablo, unfortunately I do not have such a script however it could just be a curl call to https://api.digitalocean.com with your API credentials.
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aronjayvo March 5, 2016

You can’t create a snapshot without downtime or shutting off your droplet. The best you can do is like what @pablo said, schedule your snapshot when there are least traffic in your site.

Better yet, if you can afford, schedule a backup at your DO dashboard. Backups are pretty cheap anyway, $1 per month if you are running the 512MB droplet, or 10% of your droplet MSF.

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