Review these topics to learn about environment snapshots
and understand how to use them.
Environment snapshot use cases
The following
examples describe some common use cases for environment snapshots:
- Snapshot an environment to make changes to the environment configuration
or perform testing of new tools or scripts.
- Store a snapshot of an environment as an temporary backup or as
part of an official archive.
- Snapshot an environment to capture a point-in-time environment
configuration that corresponds with a milestone, such as an external
or internal release.
Environment snapshot concepts and terms
In
the UI, snapshots introduce some new concepts and terms for working
with environments.
Environment snapshot:
A snapshot is a new instance of an existing environment. Some key
points to remember about snapshots are as follows:
Snapshot set: A snapshot set is
the set of all the environment snapshots that are descendants of one
base snapshot. At a minimum, the set includes the base or parent snapshot
and a child snapshot. In the UI, the Snapshot icon
beside the environment name indicates that a snapshot
set for the environment exists.
Base snapshot:
Initially, all environments have a snapshot name of Base Snapshot.
You can change Base Snapshot to another name. The base snapshot is
the parent of the snapshot set.
Default environment
snapshot: The default environment snapshot is the current,
working environment. Only one snapshot in the set can be the default.
If you do not specify a default snapshot, the base snapshot is the
default.
- In the UI, the default snapshot is displayed at the top-level
of the environments list. Select Environments to
display the environments list.
- When you select an environment with snapshots, the default environment
snapshot is used unless you select a different environment snapshot
in the list box.
- To access and work with other snapshots in the environment snapshot
set, you must click the Snapshot icon
.
Environment snapshot views
Select the Snapshot
icon

to display the Snapshot view. In the UI, the Snapshot
view shows the hierarchy of the snapshots in a set:
- The base snapshot is at the top level and has the name Base Snapshot,
if you do not assign it a unique name.
- All environment snapshots are children of a base snapshot. Children
of the same base snapshot are indented at the same level in the Snapshot
column.
- Environment snapshots that are created from a child snapshot become
children of the child snapshot and are indented at the next level
in the Snapshot column.