Take a manual snapshot

As part of the Backups service, you can store a manual backup of your compute instance through the manual snapshot feature. This can be useful to save a restore point before a major system upgrade or before significant changes to software or configuration within your compute instance.

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The manual snapshot feature is part of the paid Backups service and, as such, the Backups service must be enabled. See Enable backups.

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Only a single manual snapshot can be stored for a compute instance. Taking a new snapshot overwrites any previously saved manual snapshot.

  1. Log in to Cloud Manager and click the Linodes link in the left navigation menu.

  2. On the Linodes page, select the Linode Compute Instance from the list.

  3. Navigate to the Backups tab.

  4. Under Manual Snapshot, enter a label for this new snapshot and click Take Snapshot.

    Screenshot of the Manual Snapshot section within <<CLOUD_PORTAL>>

  5. A pop-up box displays confirming that you intend to take a new manual snapshot and that any previous snapshot will be overwritten. Click Take Snapshot to proceed.

Creating the manual snapshot can take several minutes, depending on the size of your compute insatnce and the amount of data you have stored on it. Other Cloud Manager jobs for this compute instance will not run until the snapshot job completes.