Snapshots

Creating, restoring, copying, moving, and verifying snapshots for GridGain 8 clusters from the Control Center Snapshots screen.

The users of GridGain Ultimate edition can manage snapshots via the Snapshots tab of the Snapshots screen. This tab lets you create, restore, copy, move, delete, and perform integrity checks of snapshots.

You can also create and manage snapshot schedules, as well as view history of snapshot operations.

In addition to the snapshots created in Control Center, the list of snapshots contains the snapshots that were created by using programming APIs or the snapshot management tool. See Snapshots and Recovery or our video guide.

Snapshots Screen

The Snapshots screen displays the following information about each snapshot:

To add columns to the table or remove them from the table, select the Table Columns option from the table's context menu, then select or clear check boxes for the columns on the list that opens.

Column	Description
Start Time	Time when the snapshot create operation began.
Type	Full or incremental.
ID	The snapshot ID.
Mode	The method that was used to create the snapshot, automatically on a schedule or manually.
Operation	The status of the snapshot operation that is being executed on the snapshot. The column shows the progress of the operation while the operation is in progress, and changes to OK when the operation is complete. Possible values: - CREATING - MOVING - REMOVING - CHECKING - COPYING - RESTORING
Caches	The number of caches included in the snapshot. Click the number to view the names of the caches.
Size	The total size of the snapshot data. Displays a human-readable value (for example, 1.0 GB). Displays – if the data is absent. Hidden by default.
Archive	The compression algorithm used for the snapshot. Possible values: NONE, ZIP, ZSTD, LZ4, SNAPPY. Hidden by default.
Compression	The compression level. -1 means no compression is applied. Valid range is -1 through 23. Hidden by default.

Creating Snapshots

Before you can create snapshots, snapshot functionality must be enabled. See Enabling Snapshots.

To create a snapshot:

1. Click Create snapshot.

   The Create snapshot dialog opens.

   

   Create Snapshot
2. Select the snapshot type: Full (default) or Incremental.

3. Optionally, to change the default snapshot compression (ZIP, level 1), select the compression type and, if prompted, the compression level.

   

   Create Snapshot - compression
4. Optionally, to limit the snapshot writing speed to a specific number of Bytes per second, enter the required number of Bytes in the Write throttling field.

5. Optionally, to change the default snapshot scope (all caches and cache groups):

   

   Create Snapshot - scope

   1. Select one of the alternative options:

      • Include specific to include only explicitly specified caches and groups

      • Exclude specific to include all caches and groups except for explicitly specified ones

   2. From the Caches and Cache groups drop-down lists, select the caches and groups to be included or excluded (depending on the option you have selected in (a) above).

6. Click Create.

A snapshot is created in each node's snapshot folder. Each node saves its part of the data. The snapshot folder is specified in the node configuration.

Restoring Snapshots

To restore a snapshot:

1. Click on the ⋮ icon in the table row that corresponds to the snapshot that you want to restore.

2. From the menu that opens, select Restore from snapshot.

   The Restore snapshot <name> dialog opens.

   

   Restore Snapshot

   By default, you restore all caches and cache groups found in the snapshot.

3. To exclude specific caches and cache groups:

   1. Select the Exclude specific option.

      The dialog layout changes.

      

      Exclude specific caches and groups
   2. From the Caches and/or Cache groups drop-down lists, select the required entities.

4. Alternatively, to restore (include) only specific caches or cache groups:

   1. Select the Include specific option.

      This excludes from the restoration process all caches and groups found in the snapshot.

   2. From the Caches and/or Cache groups drop-down lists, select the entities to restore.

5. Optionally (if you are using the Exclude specific or Include specific option), select the Force check box to extend the include/exclude selection from caches to cache groups the caches belong to. For example, if you chose to exclude cache ABC that belongs to groups A and B, both these groups will be excluded.

6. In the Comment field, type a comment regarding the restoration action.

7. Click Restore.

Copying/Moving Snapshots

To move or copy a snapshot to a specific path, click the ⋮ icon and select Move or Copy. Then, in the dialog box that appears, enter the destination path and click OK. The destination path must be available on each node.

Verifying Snapshot Integrity

To verify that the snapshot data is not broken, run an integrity check. To run the check, click the ⋮ icon and select Check.

The Operation column indicates that a check is in progress. When the check is finished, the result is shown in the dialog.

• If snapshot is valid, you will see the following result:

  

  Snapshot Valid
• If snapshot is broken, you can view error details:

  

  Snapshot Broken