In OpenVZ, you can save the current state of a virtual machine or container by creating a snapshot. You can then continue working in your virtual machine or container and return to the saved state any time you wish. Snapshots may be useful in the following cases:
- Configuring applications with a lot of settings. You may wish to check how settings work before applying them to the application. So, before you start experimenting, you create a snapshot.
- Participating in large-scale development projects. You may wish to mark development milestones by creating a snapshot for each. If anything goes wrong, you can easily revert to the previous milestone and resume the development.
In OpenVZ, you can create, list, revert to, and delete snapshots. These operations are described in the following subsections.
