virtualbox.org

Hi All

Is it possible to take a snapshot without saving the memory?

I realise that this would cause a snapshot to be in a 'crash consistent' state, but I would like to beef up the time it takes to snapshot a machine.

i.e perhaps a command line option?

Cheers
Mic

You shut down the VM and then you take the snapshot.

If you really want to take a snapshot of a running VM without saving its memory state, you must really hate your data.

Come on, how is snapshotting without memory any different from pulling the power.

And when was the last time a server didn't recover from power loss?

ESXi offers it as an option.

Are you the local authority on data security?

Think outside the box mate.

If VirtualBox is able to call upon the guest to flush it's buffers, then a snapshot without memory is pretty bloody good in my book.

UncleBen wrote:Come on, how is snapshotting without memory any different from pulling the power.

Exactly. How is that desirable? Users would inevitably trash their data and then come back to us and complain.

I appreciate that. But if vbox is able to trigger a buffer flush, then the method I describe is still a hell of a lot more secure than a power failure.

Keep in mind that when a 'Shadow Copy' of an NTFS volume or an LVM or whatever, the results are pretty much the same. What you get is a copy of the filesystem/disk, in a crash-consitent state.

Im suggesting that perhaps it is a hidden, or command line only option? I didn't come here for a lecture about data security. For all you know, the machine is serving mp3 files and really has no care if the most recently added mp3 file makes it into the backup or not.

Regarding the hand holding of your users, the last time I snapshoted without specifying '--pause', it trashed my (testing) VM. Gone

(See this post, which looks like it was caused also by forgetting '--pause': viewtopic.php?f=7&t=44906)

So no, VirtualBox is not idiot proof, nor should it be.

If us power users and/or engineers wanted idiot proof, we would still be using a system akin to an apple 2e.

But thanks for hijacking my thread, speaking of which, is the option there or not?

Hey did you end up getting answer or just decide that it wasn't an option?

I agree it would be good to have the option, and I have also trashed many VMs by forgetting --pause