This is a short post showing how easy it is to restore a Vultr VM (Ubuntu) to a previous snapshot.
I have set up servers on Digital Ocean, AWS and Vultr before but it is always good to know how to restore a system when disaster strikes. Never rely on backups or snapshots to save you in the time of disaster but restoring a backup or snapshot will get you going to fast (depending on how frequent you backup). It is a good idea to know how to reconfigure your servers and also copy files and code to git or other offsite platforms regularly.
I recently had a test server fall over after upgrading MongoDB 3.4 to 3.6, I think I installed upstart to try and get MongoDB to run at startup.
My server won’t boot, bad sectors, invalid VM errors etc.
I tried repairing (based on advice around removing upstart etc)
But the suggested repair was for a GUI Ubuntu (and the server did not boot anyway).
3-week old snapshots available
Login to Vultr, click the server you want to restore, click Snapshots and then select the select the snapshot to restore and click the restore button on the right.
Restore will be started
Restore may take up to 1-hour ot more. Obviously, the server will be offline during the restore.
Restore progress will be available from the main server list.
You will be able to see when the snapshot has been restored.
You can verify the server is up by accessing the server (http or root console)
Don’t forget to take new snapshots regularly.
Consider automated backups
Now I just needed to follow my guide on installing MongoDb 3.6 as this was the only change in the last 3 weeks (festive holidays).
Oh, and I had to patch for Spectre and Meltdown.
Yes you can restore a smaller VM onto a larger VM just not a larger snapshot onto a smaller,
I hope this guide helps someone.
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Revision History
v1.2 Restoring a smaller snapshot onto a larger VM info
v1.1 Patch for Spectre and Meltdown
v1.0 Initial post