Skip to main content
Element Software
12.5 and 12.7

Use volume snapshots for data protection

Contributors netapp-pcarriga amgrissino

A volume snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a volume. You can take a snapshot of a volume and use the snapshot later if you need to roll a volume back to the state it was in at the time the snapshot was created.

Snapshots are similar to volume clones. However, snapshots are simply replicas of volume metadata, so you cannot mount or write to them. Creating a volume snapshot also takes only a small amount of system resources and space, which makes snapshot creation faster than cloning.

You can take a snapshot of an individual volume or a set of volumes.

Optionally, replicate snapshots to a remote cluster and use them as a backup copy of the volume. This enables you to roll back a volume to a specific point in time by using the replicated snapshot. Alternatively, you can create a clone of a volume from a replicated snapshot.