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What's the difference between Snapshot & Recovery Points?

  • 15 June 2020
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Whenever I take snapshots from Prism Central it shows under Recovery point but not under Snapshot. Not sure, if both are same Thing.

Also, recovery point give an option to “Replicate” , whereas Snapshot give an option to “Restore”….are both same?

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Best answer by Alona 24 September 2020, 05:36

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Userlevel 3
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Hi @Charu 

Replicate and Restore are 2 different things, we generally do restore when we want to rollback to a certain point in time copy whereas replication is like protecting certain copy to another site /DR .

Restore are stored locally while the Recovery points are stored in another site/DR site

Restore - this is replacing the current VM with a snapshot from the past, aka rolling it back to a previous state. Replicate - You are making a copy of the VM in the previous state.

Hi Charu

I guess it makes a difference between recovery points and snapshots because of the Self Service Portal, but I am searching for an explanation on that too.

My belief is that users with access to the SSP only can just be permitted to create recovery points to which they can restore and not restore the snapshots which might be done for Replication. If you asked the support or got an answer to that which makes it clear, please let me know.

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Hi @Charu 

VM Recovery Point is a Snapshot effectively, you are not wrong here.

A Snapshot can be triggered manually or by a schedule in PE. It can also be replicated to a remote site as part of the Protection Domain.

A Recovery point is a similar thing in that it is a snapshot, it is stored locally on the cluster and can be replicated to a remote cluster as part of a Protection Domain. Recovery Point can be created manually or be handled by a Protection Policy configured in PC. A VM can be restored from a Recovery Point either locally or remotely in a state of a chosen recovery point. This is effectively the same as the Clone from a Snapshot in that you are creating a copy of a VM as it was at a certain point in time in the past.

Let’s level up the complexity now.
A Snapshot is a PE/AHV term. PC can detect a Snapshot and can restore/delete a Snapshot but it can’t create a Snapshot.

Recovery Point is a PC term. PE is not even aware of such a thing. Moreover, if a VM is part of a Protection Domain “Create Recovery Option” is greyed out in PC.

To summarise, both an AHV Snapshot and PC Recovery point are technically the same technology while a Recovery Point is a construct that is operated by Prism Central.Happy to answer any further questions.

Userlevel 1
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Hi @Alona , is there a way to get list of all the Recovery Points created through Prism Central.

Userlevel 1
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@Alona I see, we can get the details in PC ->Virtual Infrastructure->Recoverable Entities. Thanks :)

Userlevel 6
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You found it:)