PRO+ Premium Content/Storage

Snapshots have their pros and cons. They can be a cost-effective way to protect data and replicate instances of a database quickly. But they can also be the source of unexpected cloud costs. The latter makes implementing effective snapshot management strategies particularly important. Before you can use this valuable tool efficiently, it's important to understand how snapshots are implemented. The first time a database snapshot is created, all the data on the source disk is copied to the snapshot. The next time a snapshot of that same disk is made, only the changes to the disk that followed the first copy are moved over. This is ideal because the only data you need to pay for is what's stored with each snapshot, rather than paying for the redundant data already present in the backup. When restoring a snapshot, each completed snapshot and incremental snapshot is copied to re-create the state of the disk at the time the last snapshot was made. This optimal solution to copying data can lead to some unexpected consequences, ...