Snapshots capture your entire VM state instantly and are ideal for quick rollbacks before risky changes. Backups are scheduled, independent copies designed for long-term retention and disaster recovery. Use snapshots for short-term protection and backups for your formal recovery plan. Define your RPO before choosing a strategy — the acceptable data loss window determines your backup frequency. Raff supports both: on-demand snapshots and automated backup schedules with customizable retention from 1 to 365+ days.
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Deploy a VMpg_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."Cloud tips, step-by-step guides, and infrastructure insights — straight to your inbox.
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