How to Manage Scheduled Snapshots?

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Article ID: CTX224163

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Description

This article describes the method to manage snapshot schedules.

Instructions

After creating snapshot schedules, you can further manage the snapshot schedules. For example, enable/disable, edit, delete or run a specific snapshot schedule.

You can manage snapshot schedule from XenCenter or xe CLI, choose either following options to configure.
Option 1: Managing Snapshot Schedules from XenCenter

On the Pool menu of XenCenter, click VM Snapshot Schedules…, then all configured snapshot schedules will display in Snapshot schedules wizard.

Click on the snapshot schedule, you can view the available options:

Enabling/Disabling a Snapshot Schedule
Select a snapshot schedule from the list of snapshot schedules defined in the pool and click Enable/Disable.
When you enable a Snapshot Schedule, automated snapshots of the specified VMs will then be generated at the scheduled time. Scheduled snapshots will be taken until the schedule is disabled.
If you want to stop automated snapshots from being taken, you can disable the Snapshot Schedule. A disabled snapshot schedule can be enabled again at any time.

Editing a Snapshot Schedule
You can change the properties of a snapshot schedule, for example, to add more VMs or to change the snapshot schedule:

Select the snapshot schedule from the list of snapshot schedules defined in the pool.
Click Properties and modify the tab you need:

Tab	Contents
General	Change the name and description of the snapshot schedule.
Custom Fields	Define extra text and date/time fields for your snapshot schedules.
VMs in the snapshot schedule	Select a VM from the list to add it to the snapshot schedule.
Snapshot Type	Change the type of snapshot that will be created.
Snapshot Schedule	Change the schedule used to take VM snapshots and change the snapshot retention value.

Click OK to save your changes and close the Properties window.

Deleting a Snapshot Schedule
Select a snapshot schedule from the list of snapshot schedules defined in the pool and click Delete.

Run a Snapshot Schedule Immediately
Select a snapshot schedule from the list of snapshot schedules defined in the pool and click Run Now, the selected schedule will be executed immediately. The generated VM snapshots will be displayed as scheduled snapshots.

Option 2: Managing Snapshot Schedules from xe CLI
You can use the following xe CLIs to manage a snapshot schedule:

Enabling/Disabling a Snapshot Schedule:

xe vmss-param-set uuid=<VMSS_UUID> enabled=<true or false>
For example:
xe vmss-param-set uuid=6e6947c2-f1ef-6779-4093-848fecc02c26 enabled=true
xe vmss-param-set uuid=6e6947c2-f1ef-6779-4093-848fecc02c26 enabled=false

Editing a Snapshot Schedule:

You can use xe vmss-param-set to modify a snapshot schedule, the available parameters are as follows ( you can’t modify related VMs using this command):

Parameter Name	Value
`name-label`	Name of the snapshot schedule policy
`name-description`	Description of the snapshot schedule policy
`enabled`	Whether or not to enable this policy - true/false
`type`	snapshot: Disk only snapshot snapshot_with_quiesce: Quiesce the VM before taking snapshot (Windows only) checkpoint: Disk and memory snapshot
`retained-snapshots`	Scheduled snapshots to be retained. Range: 1 to 10
`frequency`	hourly daily weekly
`schedule`	hour: 0 to 23 min: [0;15;30;45] days: [Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday]

You can change either option listed above, for example, change the name of a snapshot schedule:
xe vmss-param-set uuid=6e6947c2-f1ef-6779-4093-848fecc02c26 name-label=ModifiedHourlyAfter0
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Deleting a Snapshot Schedule:

xe vmss-destroy uuid=<VMSS_UUID>
Note: This command can only be used to delete a snapshot schedule with no VMs assigned to it, otherwise it will prompt you that there is a VM assigned to the snapshot schedule. For example:
xe vmss-destroy uuid=9db2d0fe-beb8-1c1b-740b-45ed49fbdb7d
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