Snapshots

Snapshots

For change management, regularly running IP Fabric discovery is necessary. A periodic discovery run can be scheduled at Settings → Advanced → Snapshots → Timed Snapshots.

Here is an example for an automatic discovery run at 10 minutes past every hour (0:10; 1:10; 2:10; 3:10, etc.).

How Scheduling Work In IPF

Let’s assume that snapshot is scheduled for every hour and snapshot takes 4h:20min to be created, then the next snapshot will be scheduled once the previous snapshot finishes. The scheduled time will be set at the next possible period according to the cron setup.

Snapshot Retention Rules (from version 4.1)

We added support for various snapshot retention policies in IP Fabric version 4.1.

How Does the Snapshot Retention Work

It works in two steps:

1. If any of the keep rules are enabled, IP Fabric goes through unloaded snapshots and based on enabled keep rules it marks snapshots that will retain and those that will be deleted.

2. HDD utilization and a number of unloaded snapshots are checked. If any of these rules are exceeded, the oldest unloaded snapshots are deleted.

Please note:

1. HDD utilization and the number of snapshots have precedence over keep rules. This means that snapshots marked as retained by a keep rule can be deleted when the HDD utilization or number of snapshots are exceeded.

2. When at least one retention rule is enabled, all snapshots not protected by them will be removed regardless of reaching HDD utilization or snapshots count limits.

3. Loaded snapshots are not affected by these rules. It affects only unloaded snapshots

4. IP Fabric only supports delete action at the moment. Additional actions will be added in coming releases