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Windows Server 2008 R2 : Deploying and Using Windows Virtualization - Using Snapshots of Guest Operating System Sessions

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3/28/2011 9:46:23 PM
A highly versatile function in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V is the option to create a snapshot of a guest session. A snapshot in Windows Hyper-V uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology that captures an image of a file on a server—in this case, the file is the VHD image of the virtual server itself. At any point in time in the future, the snapshot can be used for recovery.

Snapshots for Image Rollback

One common use of a guest image snapshot is to roll back an image to a previous state. This is frequently done with guest images used for demonstration purposes, or test labs where a scenario is tested to see the results and compared with identical tests of other scenarios, or for the purpose of preparing for a software upgrade or migration.

In the case of a guest image used for demonstration purposes, a user might run through a demo of a software program where they add information, delete information, make software changes, or otherwise modify information in the software on the guest image. Rather than having to go back and delete the changes, or rebuilding the image from scratch to do the demo again, with a snapshot, the user can simply roll the image back to the snapshot that was available before the changes were made to the image.

Image rollback has been successfully used for training purposes where an employee runs through a process, then rolls back the image so they can run through the same process all over again repeating the process on the same base image but without previous installations or configurations.

In network infrastructures, a snapshot is helpful when an organization applies a patch or update to a server, or a software upgrade is performed and problems occur; the administrator can simply roll back the image to the point prior to the start of the upgrade or migration.

Snapshots for Guest Session Server Fault Tolerance

Snapshots are commonly used in business environments for the purpose of fault tolerance or disaster recovery. A well-timed snapshot right before a system failure can help an organization roll back their server to the point right before the server failed or problem occurred. Rather than waiting hours to restore a server from tape, the activation of a snapshot image is nothing more than choosing the snapshot and selecting to start the guest image. When the guest image starts up, it is in the state that the image was at the time the snapshot was created.

Creating a Snapshot of a Guest Image

Snapshots are very easy to create. To create a snapshot, do the following:

1.
From the Server Manager console or from the Hyper-V Manager MMC snap-in, click to select the guest session for which you want to create a snapshot.

2.
Right-click the guest session name, and choose Snapshot. A snapshot of the image will immediately be taken of the guest image and the snapshot will show up in the Snapshots pane, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Snapshot of a running Hyper-V guest session.

Rolling Back a Guest Image to a Previous Snapshot Image

The term used in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to roll back an image is called “applying” a snapshot to an existing image. When an image is rolled back, the image that is currently running has the snapshot information applied to the image, thus bringing the image back to an earlier configuration state. To apply a snapshot, do the following:

1.
From the Server Manager console or from the Hyper-V Manager MMC snap-in, click the snapshot to which you want to revert the running guest image.

2.
Right-click the snapshot image and choose Apply. The configuration state of the image will immediately be reverted to the state of the image when the snapshot was taken.

Note

By default, the name of the snapshot image takes on the date and time the image was created. As an example, if the virtual machine is called “Windows 2008 R2 IIS,” an image taken on September 2, 2009 at 9:42 p.m. would show up as “Windows 2008 R2 IIS - (9/2/2009 - 9:42:22 PM).” Snapshots can be renamed to something more meaningful, if desired, such as “Clean Build with All Patches”.


Reverting a Snapshot Session

When working with snapshots, if you snapshot a session, the revert action can be used on the virtual machine to revert the guest session’s state to the last created or applied snapshot. All changes since the last creation or application of a snapshot will be discarded.

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