To protect data against accidental deletions or malware, you can schedule periodical snapshots.


If you have another Syneto unit, you can also replicate the snapshots for disaster recovery protection.


NOTE: In case you will replicate to another Syneto unit, do not forget to add the replication key to the destination storage.

NOTE: In case you added new virtual machines to the mounted VMware datastore and it does not show up in the VM snapshotting consistency step, please go to the Virtualization > VMware datacenter page and press the button.


To protect your data create a new snapshot schedule. Select the folder or virtual disk you would like to protect. If the protected source has the icon it means it is mounted as a VMware datastore and contains virtual machines. If the protected source has the icon it means it is mounted as a VMware datastore but it does not contain virtual machines.



Next, select the frequency at which the snapshots will be taken and the number of snapshots to keep on the local storage.



If you have another Syneto unit, you can replicate the snapshots to it, this way you can recover your data in case of a disaster.
Enter the replication destination IP address or hostname, then press VERIFY.

In case you are replicating over the internet, it is recommended that you use an encrypted connection. If the replication is made on the local network it is recommended that you use an unencrypted connection, this has the advantage of being faster to replicate. Unencrypted replication is available only if the replication destination has support for it, it must have at least version 3.2.0.




In case the selected source was mounted as a VMware datastore and it contains virtual machines you can have different snapshotting consistencies for each virtual machine.

Live snapshot: Disk writes are quiesced and the VM memory is stored on the drive. Slow.

Application consistent: Disk writes are quiesced but the VM memory is not stored on the drive. Fast.

Crash consistent: Equivalent with a hard reset. Fastest.

On a minute by minute schedule, the virtual machine snapshots will be crash consistent.



In the last step, you will see a summary of the schedule that you configured.



After you start the creation/update of a schedule you will be presented with a progress. This progress will let you know if everything was successful or if something went wrong.


To make a change to the schedule use the Edit schedule from the drop-down.

To change the virtual machine snapshotting consistency use the Configure VM snapshots from the drop down.