How to Create Snapshots of Droplets
Snapshots are on-demand disk images of DigitalOcean Droplets and volumes saved to your account. Use them to create new Droplets and volumes with the same contents.
You can create snapshots from an existing Droplet to save all of the current contents from the Droplet’s disk.
Depending on the services running on the Droplet, you may want to power off the Droplet before taking a snapshot to ensure all applications have written out their data to disk. For example, many databases don’t guarantee data consistency on disk unless the database service is stopped or the entire Droplet is powered off first.
You can power off a Droplet through the control panel or with the command line using poweroff or shutdown. We recommend using the command line because it makes sure all services are stopped before the Droplet is powered off:
sudo shutdown -h now
However, if you want to power off a Droplet through the control panel, click the Droplet’s name to go to its detail page. Click the ON switch in the upper-right corner, then click Turn off from the pop-up warning window.
Once the Droplet is powered off, you can take a snapshot from the Droplet’s Snapshots menu, in the Take snapshot section.
You can take a live snapshot without powering off your Droplet from the Droplet’s Snapshots menu, in the Take snapshot section.
The Enter snapshot name field prefills the Droplet’s name followed by the current Unix timestamp to help you identify the snapshot later, but you can customize the name now or after you take it. Click the Take Snapshot or Take Live Snapshot button to create a snapshot.
A progress bar shows the progress of snapshot creation. Once complete, the snapshot is listed along with any other previous snapshots. To power the Droplet back on, click the OFF switch.