Environments are built and managed using blueprints and snapshots. A blueprint acts as a container for an environment's snapshots, serving as a container for efficiently creating and managing environments. With blueprints, you can consistently set up and modify environments based on predefined configurations.
Snapshots allow you to capture the exact state of an environment at a specific point in time. Snapshots back up the entire environment as it is in its current state. This means a complete replica of all of your virtual machines, the RAM, CPU and disk allocations, the network configurations, users, installed software, documents, and settings at the time the snapshot was taken. Even the current RAM and disk states are backed up, so any running services and applications you had when you started the snapshot will be saved in that state.
To capture a snapshot:
- Click the Infrastructure button.
- Click the Environments List tab from the left menu and select the environment for which you want to capture a snapshot. Note that the environment must be active.
- Click the Snapshot button at the top right, as shown below:
The following is displayed:
- Enter a Name for the snapshot and an optional Snapshot Description.
- When relevant, use the Regions field to enter a new blueprint name. The environment’s blueprint will be set to the new blueprint name. Select any regions to which you want to copy the snapshot. Copying will be done after the snapshot is taken, and you will be notified by email when it is completed. Copying is supported from the US East to Asia Pacific and Europe only. If the blueprint already exists in other regions and you check Set as default, the relevant regions are selected here, and you cannot deselect them. This ensures that all existing regional copies of the blueprint are updated with the current default snapshot. Snapshots that are hosted in multiple regions must have the same snapshot in all regions before it can be marked as default, any active experiences that are based on the current default snapshot will use that older default snapshot until the newer snapshot’s transfer to all regions has completed.
- Select the Publish to the default environment blueprint option.
Alternatively, select the Publish to a new blueprint option, which will create a new blueprint and save the snapshot there. - Click the Take Snapshot button to create the snapshot.
You can save five snapshots per blueprint. If you exceed that number, you'll see a red notification at the bottom of the Take Snapshot screen informing you that the maximum number of snapshots has been reached. You can save the new snapshot to a new blueprint or take the snapshot in the default environment blueprint, which will delete the oldest snapshot automatically. Alternatively, you can manually delete a snapshot of your choosing before taking the snapshot.