Do not use snapshots as a long-term production backup solution. A snapshot is a copy of files stored within the same datastore, and if the datastore is lost, the virtual machine and snapshot are also lost. However, snapshots do allow consumers to quickly take temporary near-line backups of the current virtual machine state to mitigate risk during change management windows and then quickly restore when needed to return to a previous configuration.

Snapshots allow easy in-place upgrades with minimal risk and are an excellent solution for version control when a vCloud environment is used for development. Developers can make changes to the virtual machine and then, if a failure occurs, they can easily roll back to the previous version (state).

Some backup vendors use snapshots to create a copy of the virtual machine and then export the snapshots to a storage location outside of the vCloud infrastructure. For more information, see the individual vendor solution briefs on the VMware Solutions Exchange (https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/).