Cloud Snapshots vs Backups: What's the Difference?

Introduction\n\nCloud data protection comes down to two tools every server operator needs to understand: snapshots and backups. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they work differently, serve different purposes, and should be used together — not as substitutes for each other.\n\nA snapshot is a point-in-time image of your entire VM, captured almost instantly and stored so you can roll back your server to its exact previous state. A backup is a scheduled, independent copy of your data designed for long-term retention and recovery from serious failures. Knowing when to use each — and how to combine them — is the foundation of any solid data protection strategy.\n\nThis guide explains how snapshots and backups work under the hood, compares their trade-offs across key dimensions, and helps you build a protection plan that matches your actual risk tolerance. You will also see how Raff's data protection features map to each approach.\n\n## How Snapshots Work\n\nA snapshot records the state of your VM's disk at a precise moment in time. Most cloud platforms, including Raff, implement snapshots using copy-on-write (COW) technology. When a snapshot is taken, the system does not immediately duplicate all your data. Instead, it marks the current state and tracks any new writes going forward. Only changed data is stored — the snapshot references the unchanged original blocks.\n\nThis design makes snapshot creation nearly instantaneous regardless of how much data is on your disk. A 200 GB server snapshot can be captured in seconds rather than the minutes or hours a full disk copy would require.\n\n### What Snapshots Are Good For\n\nSnapshots excel in two scenarios:\n\nPre-change insurance: Before applying a major OS update, installing new software, or making configuration changes that are difficult to reverse, take a snapshot. If something breaks, you can restore the entire server to its exact previous state in minutes.\n\nDevelopment and testing: Snapshots let you branch your server state. You can take a snapshot, run destructive tests or experiments, and roll back cleanly without any of the test changes persisting.\n\n### Snapshot Limitations\n\nBecause snapshots typically live on the same storage infrastructure as your VM, they share one critical weakness: if the underlying storage platform experiences a failure, both your live data and your snapshots may be affected simultaneously. Snapshots also accumulate storage costs over time as the difference between the snapshot state and your current disk grows. They are not a substitute for off-platform backups.\n\n## How Backups Work\n\nBackups are scheduled copies of your VM's data that are stored independently of the source VM. Unlike snapshots, which are designed for near-instant capture and fast local rollback, backups are optimized for durability and long-term retention.\n\nRaff's automated backup system lets you configure daily, weekly, or monthly schedules with retention periods ranging from 1 day to 365+ days. Backups run on a schedule you define and are stored separately from your VM's primary storage.\n\n### Full vs Incremental Backups\n\nCloud backup systems generally fall into two categories:\n\nFull backups copy all data every time. They are simple to restore from because every backup is self-contained, but they consume more storage and take longer to complete.\n\nIncremental backups copy only the data that changed since the last backup. They are faster and more storage-efficient but require the full backup chain to be intact for restoration. If any backup in the chain is corrupted or missing, restoration from later increments may fail.\n\nRaff's backup system handles the full/incremental logic automatically — you configure the schedule and retention period, and the platform manages what is stored and how it is linked.\n\n### What Backups Are Good For\n\nBackups are designed for recovery from serious failures: accidental data deletion, ransomware, application corruption that went unnoticed for days, and infrastructure-level disasters. Because backups are retained over time, they give you a history of recovery points — not just the most recent state.\n\n## Key Differences at a Glance\n\n| Dimension | Snapshot | Backup |\n|---|---|---|\n| Creation speed | Seconds (copy-on-write) | Minutes to hours |\n| Storage location | Same platform as VM | Independent storage |\n| Best for | Short-term rollback, pre-change safety | Long-term retention, disaster recovery |\n| Retention | Manual management | Configurable schedule (1–365+ days on Raff) |\n| Protection against infrastructure failure | Limited | Strong |\n| Restore speed | Very fast | Moderate |\n| Cost model | Grows with data changes | Predictable per-schedule |\n| Automation | Manual or triggered | Fully automated |\n\n## Understanding RPO and RTO\n\nBefore choosing a backup frequency or snapshot schedule, you need to define two numbers that describe your actual risk tolerance.\n\n### Recovery Point Objective (RPO)\n\nRPO is the maximum amount of data loss you can accept, measured in time. If your RPO is 24 hours, you can tolerate losing up to one day of data. If your RPO is 1 hour, you need backups (or replication) running at least hourly.\n\nRPO directly determines your backup frequency:\n\n- RPO 24 hours → Daily automated backups\n- RPO 4–8 hours → Multiple backups per day\n- RPO near-zero → Continuous replication or database-level backups alongside VM backups\n\n### Recovery Time Objective (RTO)\n\nRTO is the maximum time you can tolerate your service being unavailable during recovery. A 4-hour RTO means your recovery process — from detecting the failure to restoring service — must complete within 4 hours.\n\nSnapshots typically deliver faster RTO than backups because they restore in place on the same infrastructure. Backups may take longer to restore because data needs to be transferred back from independent storage.\n\n> Tip: Define your RPO and RTO before configuring any protection strategy. These numbers drive every decision: how often to back up, how long to retain, and whether snapshots alone are sufficient or backups are required.\n\n## Combining Snapshots and Backups\n\nThe most resilient data protection strategy uses both tools for what each does best. A practical framework:\n\nSnapshots for operational continuity: Take a snapshot before every significant change — OS upgrades, application deployments, major configuration edits. Keep 2–3 recent snapshots at any time. Delete older ones once you have confirmed the change is stable.\n\nAutomated backups for disaster recovery: Configure a daily or weekly automated backup schedule based on your RPO. Set retention to match your compliance or operational requirements — Raff supports retention from 1 day to 365+ days.\n\nTest your restores: An untested backup is not a backup. Periodically restore from a backup to a separate VM and verify the data is intact and the application starts correctly. Schedule this as a recurring task — monthly at minimum for production systems.\n\n> Warning: Never assume a backup or snapshot worked without verifying it. Cloud backup systems are reliable, but configuration errors, storage exhaustion, and permission issues can silently cause backup jobs to fail. Monitor your backup history regularly.\n\n## How Raff Handles Snapshots and Backups\n\nRaff's data protection features cover both sides of this equation.\n\nOn-demand snapshots can be taken at any time from the Raff control panel. There is no downtime requirement — snapshots are created live while your VM is running. Snapshot pricing is based on size and retention period; current rates are on the pricing page.\n\nAutomated backups are configured per VM with a schedule (daily, weekly, or monthly) and a retention window. Retention is fully customizable from 1 day to 365+ days depending on your needs. Backup costs are billed as an additional service on top of VM costs — there are no hidden charges for the VM itself.\n\nBoth snapshots and backups can be restored directly from the Raff control panel. You can restore to the same VM (overwriting the current state) or clone a snapshot or backup into a new VM for testing or forensic investigation without affecting production.\n\n> Note: Raff's automated backup and snapshot tools support the shared responsibility model for disaster recovery. Raff maintains internal DR plans for its own infrastructure — customers are responsible for configuring backup schedules and testing their own restore procedures.\n\n## Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Workload\n\nDifferent workloads have different data protection requirements. Here is a practical starting point:\n\nPersonal projects and development servers: Weekly automated backups with 30-day retention, plus manual snapshots before major changes. An RPO of 7 days is typically acceptable for non-production workloads.\n\nProduction web applications: Daily automated backups with 30–90 day retention, plus pre-deployment snapshots. Target an RPO of 24 hours or less.\n\nDatabase servers: Daily VM backups plus database-level dumps (pg_dump, mysqldump) stored independently. VM-level backups capture a consistent state, but databases benefit from application-aware backup methods that guarantee transactional consistency.\n\nCompliance-sensitive workloads: Consult your compliance framework (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2) for minimum retention requirements. Many frameworks specify 1-year or longer retention for audit logs and certain data types.\n\n\n## Common Mistakes to Avoid\n\nEven teams with good intentions make the same recurring data protection mistakes. Understanding these pitfalls is as important as knowing the right configuration.\n\n### Taking Snapshots Instead of Configuring Backups\n\nSnapshots are convenient — a single click in the control panel, instant capture, no schedule to configure. This convenience leads many teams to rely on snapshots as their only data protection mechanism. The problem: snapshots are stored on the same infrastructure as your VM. A storage-level incident that affects your VM will also affect snapshots stored alongside it.\n\nBackups exist precisely because some failure scenarios eliminate the very infrastructure your snapshot depends on. Configure automated backups as your primary recovery mechanism and treat snapshots as a fast, convenient supplement for routine operational safety.\n\n### Not Testing Restores\n\nA backup that has never been tested is an assumption, not a guarantee. Backup systems can fail silently: misconfigured retention policies, storage quota exhaustion, permission errors, and incremental chain corruption can all cause backup jobs to appear successful while producing unusable restore points.\n\nBuild restore testing into your operational calendar. For production systems, test monthly. For critical databases, test every time you run a backup rotation or change retention settings. Restore to a separate VM, verify the data is intact, confirm the application starts correctly, then delete the test VM.\n\n### Setting Retention Too Short\n\nRetention policies are often configured with storage cost in mind rather than recovery needs. A 7-day retention window sounds reasonable until you discover that a corrupted database migration was pushed three weeks ago and went unnoticed. By the time the corruption surfaces in your application's data, every backup in a 7-day window already contains the corrupted state.\n\nFor production databases and critical application data, maintain at least 30 days of retention. For compliance-sensitive data, review your applicable regulations — many frameworks require 1–7 years of retention for audit logs and transactional records.\n\n### Forgetting About Application Consistency\n\nVM-level snapshots and backups capture the disk state at a point in time. For most applications this is fine, but databases present a specific challenge: if a snapshot is taken while a database is in the middle of writing a transaction, the snapshot may capture a partially-written state that the database cannot cleanly recover from.\n\nThe solution depends on the database. For PostgreSQL and MySQL, taking a VM snapshot while the database is running is generally safe because these databases use write-ahead logging and can recover from interrupted writes on startup. For maximum confidence, use database-native backup tools (pg_dump, mysqldump) in addition to VM-level backups — the database-level backup guarantees transactional consistency in a way VM snapshots cannot.\n\n### Ignoring the Recovery Time\n\nTeams often focus on RPO (how much data they can afford to lose) and neglect RTO (how long recovery takes). A daily backup with 90-day retention sounds comprehensive until a 2 AM incident requires restoring 200 GB of data over a network connection, taking 4 hours — well past the service's 1-hour recovery target.\n\nKnow your restore time before you need it. Time a test restore under realistic conditions. If the restore time exceeds your RTO, adjust your strategy: more frequent backups of only critical data, a warm standby VM, or a faster restore mechanism.\n\n## When to Take a Snapshot vs When to Configure a Backup\n\nAs a practical decision guide, use this framework:\n\nTake a snapshot when:\n- You are about to run a major OS upgrade\n- You are deploying a new application version that changes the database schema\n- You are making manual configuration changes you are not fully confident about\n- You want a quick checkpoint before testing something destructive\n\nConfigure or update automated backups when:\n- You are deploying a new production server for the first time\n- Your business or compliance requirements change the acceptable RPO\n- You are adding a database or other stateful service to an existing server\n- Your current backup retention is insufficient for your recovery scenarios\n\nDo both:\n- When deploying significant infrastructure for the first time\n- When you have met or exceeded your current backup retention limit and want to reset the baseline\n\n## Conclusion\n\nSnapshots and backups are complementary tools, not competing ones. Snapshots give you fast, low-overhead rollback for day-to-day operational safety. Backups give you durable, long-term protection against the failures snapshots cannot guard against.\n\nStart by defining your RPO — that single number will tell you how often you need to back up. Then layer snapshots on top for pre-change protection. Test your restores at least monthly, and monitor your backup history to catch failures before they become disasters.\n\nRaff's data protection features are available on all VM tiers. You can configure automated backups and take on-demand snapshots directly from the Raff control panel. For a full breakdown of storage and backup costs, see the pricing page."