My suggestion would be to use PBS (Proxmox Backup Server). Backup the VM you want to PBS, and then they can restore from it. I don't believe it's possible with VM snapshots. Answer from fokkerlit on reddit.com
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
cloning vm with snapshots | Proxmox Support Forum
February 16, 2020 - @Fabian_E you are right: need to copy original main disk from disabled vm and all the snapshots, to make this "feature" works. of cource with replacing storage/mac/vmgenid in clonded config (original config copy-pasta).
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
cloning a VM with all snapshots | Proxmox Support Forum
August 1, 2024 - If you really want to clone a VM ... 1. Go to the directory on your NAS share, where the VM's qcow2 file is located (usually called `images`) and copy the whole directory and rename the files accordingly to the new VM's id (you may need ...
Copy of VM including snapshots | Proxmox Support Forum
In Proxmox web if at Snapshots appears the same hierarchy for the new machine as the old one. ... This method worked fine for cloning a machine with eth0 interface but when I try to clone a VM that has virtio interface after doing all the copies when I start the VM from Proxmox console there ... More on forum.proxmox.com
Clone of VM vs Clone of VM using Snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
Can anyone explain me the difference between Clone of VM Directly vs Clone of VM using Snapshot More on forum.proxmox.com
Is it possible to export VMs with Snapshots for use on other Proxmox instances?
My suggestion would be to use PBS (Proxmox Backup Server). Backup the VM you want to PBS, and then they can restore from it. I don't believe it's possible with VM snapshots. More on reddit.com
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June 12, 2025New virtual machine from snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
Hello. tell me, can I somehow deploy a new virtual machine from the created snapshot? Is there any way to do this? For example, a user deleted a file inside a virtual machine. It is expensive to deploy backup and sometimes it is outdated. But there is a daily snapshot created by cron. In order... More on forum.proxmox.com
Videos
06:45
How to clone a Proxmox Virtual Machine - YouTube
20:06
Proxmox VE 6.1 Snapshots / Backup / Clone (2020) - 😲 Besser ...
02:59
Proxmox Cloning: Clone Virtual Machines Using Full and Linked Clones ...
Master Proxmox Backups: How to Take Snapshots and Secure Your Data ...
10:42
Maximize Your Proxmox: Templates & Snapshots Explained #18 - YouTube
08:41
Cloning VMs and Containers in ProxMox - YouTube
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Create a VM copy from a VM snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
May 19, 2023 - How to do that? Thanks a lot. ... Right click on the source VM and hit clone. Then you pick the snapshot you want: ... a second problem is that i do not have enough free space on that host. That's the reason for the question about "zfs send".
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Copy of VM including snapshots | Proxmox Support Forum
August 3, 2015 - Never tried, but, looking at my VMs storage folder, you should probably: stop the VM to be cloned, clone it as usual on a storage that allows snapshots (like NFS fore above qcow2 example) and then by CLI copy snapshots raw images in the destination folder, renaming them appropriately note: the destination VM should have in its .conf a line like vmstate: <storage name>:122/vm-122-state-img_002.raw stating what snapshot file is in use now and a line like snaptime: 1438262544 stating when the snapshot in use was taken, I guess.
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Clone of VM vs Clone of VM using Snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
May 27, 2021 - If you have snapshots of the VM and you select one of those, the created clone will be in the same state as the VM when the snapshot was taken. For more information about cloning VMs take a look at [1]. [1] https://localhost:8006/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#qm_copy_and_clone
Reddit
reddit.com › r/proxmox › is it possible to export vms with snapshots for use on other proxmox instances?
r/Proxmox on Reddit: Is it possible to export VMs with Snapshots for use on other Proxmox instances?
June 12, 2025 -
I create VMs for various test environments, and would like to share these VMs with my coworkers, however I don't have a good way of sending these VMs to them. Seeing as a VM can be multiple disk images (in my case qcows) + hardware configuration, it seems much less trivial than distribution of an ova/ovf in ESXi.
Specifically, I think the issue is distributing snapshots, which I'm not sure is possible.
Top answer 1 of 5
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My suggestion would be to use PBS (Proxmox Backup Server). Backup the VM you want to PBS, and then they can restore from it. I don't believe it's possible with VM snapshots.
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Yes, you can send snapshots of the volumes via zfs-send/zfs-receive (check out the 'sanoid' program, or more specifically the 'syncoid' helper script to make this trivial) and then just copy and slightly edit the config file in /etc/pve/qemu-server/ to their instance (adjust as needed).
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
New virtual machine from snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
July 28, 2020 - In order not to stop the operation of the entire virtual machine, But to create a new virtual machine from yesterday's snapshot. Get the file you want and delete it. ... it depends on the storage whether this works or not. you can try yourself ...
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
How to move VM (including snapshots) to a new storage? | Proxmox Support Forum
September 26, 2020 - zfs send -R hddpool/proxmox_directories/type_zfs/vm-110-disk-0@ready_to_move | zfs recv hddpool/enc_proxmox_directories/type_zfs/vm-110-disk-0 - step4 = send the state volumes (states volumes are created when snapshotting an active VM with the "include RAM" checkbox ticked). You can list them with "zfs list" ... zfs send hddpool/proxmox_directories/type_zfs/vm-110-state-snap2 | zfs recv hddpool/enc_proxmox_directories/type_zfs/vm-110-state-snap2 - step5 = update all paths in /etc/pve/qemu-server/110.conf - step6 = start VM and test everything - step7 = destroy the old volumes and snapshots (with the -r flag)
Programster
blog.programster.org › creating-full-zfs-clones-in-proxmox
Creating Full ZFS Clones in Proxmox | Programster's Blog
January 4, 2025 - zfs send \ rpool/data/vm-$SOURCE_VM_ID-state-snapshot1 \ | zfs receive rpool/data/vm-$DEST_VM_ID-disk-0-state-snapshot1 zfs send \ rpool/data/vm-$SOURCE_VM_ID-state-snapshot2 \ | zfs receive rpool/data/vm-$DEST_VM_ID-state-snapshot2 zfs send \ rpool/data/vm-$SOURCE_VM_ID-state-snapshot3 \ | zfs receive rpool/data/vm-$DEST_VM_ID-state-snapshot3 · Now we have our snapshots, but they wont show up in the proxmox GUI. To resolve this we need to manually create or update the clone's Proxmox config file, in order to specify to tell Proxmox about the snapshots. This is easily done by copying the configuration file for the original VM over to the clone like so:
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Move VM and Snapshots to a new LVM volume | Proxmox Support Forum
January 18, 2024 - You'd need to, while the VM is down, copy the snap_vm-XYZ-disk-N_NAME and vm-XYZ-state-NAME volumes and the actual volumes (state volumes are only present for snapshots with RAM) to the new storage and adapt the VM configuration file accordingly ...
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Moving snapshot | Proxmox Support Forum
August 26, 2014 - Click to expand... copy - vm config file : /etc/pve/qemu-server/vmid.cfg - vm disk : /var/lib/vz/images/<vmid>/* to your new server. if you change the vmid, edit your vm.cfg file, and rename the vm disk files ...
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Possible to create quick copy of KVM VM by using snapshot? | Proxmox Support Forum
April 13, 2015 - This work with any storage. (so you don't need to backup/restore). linked clone of vm is not implemented. ... Are you looking for a French Proxmox training center? https://www.groupe-cyllene.com/formation-proxmox/ ... Here is how to make a copy-on-write clone of a container when storage is rbd on ceph. In this example we take a snapshot of 184 which is in ceph pool "mypool" and copy-on-write clone will be 199.
Reddit
reddit.com › r/proxmox › how to efficiently manage linked clones and snapshots on proxmox lvm thin storage and migrate to shared storage?
r/Proxmox on Reddit: How to efficiently manage linked clones and snapshots on Proxmox LVM Thin storage and migrate to shared storage?
April 8, 2023 -
Hi everyone,
I've been trying to set up my Proxmox environment with LVM Thin storage and raw images for my virtual machines (VMs) as per a tutorial. However, I'm unsure how to determine the actual space usage on this volume since I can't view the actual files. I have several VMs with varying disk sizes, and I'm wondering how efficient my linked clones and templates are, given that the total storage usage is well over 2TB on a 2TB NVME SSD volume.
In addition, I'm looking to migrate my VMs to a shared storage, and I'm considering using NFS as it seems to be widely used and supports thin provisioning. I'm wondering if it's possible to migrate my local VMs to an NFS share while preserving snapshots and linked clones.
I'm planning to install OpenMediaVault (OMV) as a guest VM on the LVM Thin raw storage and present it as an NFS share. I'm unsure whether to use ZFS or ext4 for OMV's storage volume. I could also use iSCSI, but I believe that would make sharing with a cluster or dropping files on it from other devices more complex.
The reason for using a guest VM to store the other VMs is that I plan to move the OMV VM to my NAS's storage, which is a RAID volume. Storing the VMs directly on the NAS could result in the need for frequent reconfigurations of my cluster's storage in the event of changes in NAS hardware. Also, not sharing it via the NAS will allow me to figure out a clustering approach independent of the NAS I buy. I hope to get OMV guest to be a cluster or at least live migrate or something so that it can achieve over 99.99% uptime for my VM storage.
Regarding backups, I'm not sure how Proxmox's built-in systems work yet, but I assume I'll get snapshots in time of a VM copied to a different storage location. Then, I'll have to duplicate that to an offsite copy.
My main concern now is how to manage linked VMs and snapshots for shared storage so that I can eventually have a Proxmox cluster later this year. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Exporting snapshots and backups | Proxmox Support Forum
March 19, 2022 - You could for example backup the VMs/LXCs using Vzdump to the Zvdump Storage on server A. Then copy over the backup files, using the program of your choice, to the Vzdump storage on server B and restore the VMs/LXCs there. If you are using ZFS as your storage you can use ZFS replication (see here for example) to copy datasets/zvols between pools or even hosts and this will also include snapshots. ... I'm using the backup tool from within a VM, which creates a .gz file in /var/lib/vz/dump.
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Cloning a VM from snapshot - not working | Proxmox Support Forum
April 20, 2017 - Unfortunately I am not sure if this was working in 4.x or something that came with the 5.0 code. ... Best regards, Dominik Do you already have a Commercial Support Subscription? - If not, Buy now and read the documentation ... cloning from snapshot is not available on all storage need to have snap=>1 in plugin (maybe do you use zfs ?) grep -r copy /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/ /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/RBDPlugin.pm: copy => { base => 1, current => 1, snap => 1}, /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/ZFSPlugin.pm: copy => { base => 1, current => 1}, /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/DRBDPlugin.pm: copy =>
Reddit
reddit.com › r/proxmox › linked clone with snapshots and ram state
r/Proxmox on Reddit: Linked clone with snapshots and RAM state
January 16, 2024 - Welcome to r/Proxmox , the main subreddit regarding the Proxmox hypervisor! ... I'd like to create a linked clone (either from a template or another VM), but with the caveat that it contains RAM state from a given snapshot. This way, the new VM can skip the boot sequence and have prerequisites started and ready to go and because it's a linked clone, it doesn't need to copy ...
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
Snapshots, templates, clones, backups: how do they all compare? | Proxmox Support Forum
September 21, 2020 - Of cause, you can use "zfs send | zfs receive" to incrementally sync snapshots to another server but that creates a 1:1 copy of all files and they are then just a tool to create full backups.
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
[SOLVED] - Restore snapshot on other VM | Proxmox Support Forum
March 14, 2022 - Yes, unfortunately this is not implemented in our storage layer for ZFS yet. You can try to copy it yourself, creating a dummy VM (I'm using ID 180 below, like you did) without disks and then using
Proxmox
forum.proxmox.com › home › forums › proxmox virtual environment › proxmox ve: installation and configuration
How to Clone VM Disks | Proxmox Support Forum
June 9, 2021 - This involves several steps, resizing the disk in Proxmox, then resizing the partition inside the VM and then resizing the filesystem. ... I'm trying to resize a disk to double the size. Would a snapshot protect the data in case something goes wrong? Click to expand... In general it should. But there is always "it depends". Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
Saturn ME
saturnme.com › home › blog › proxmox snapshots explained
Proxmox Snapshots Explained | Saturn ME
June 22, 2025 - # Take snapshot qm snapshot 100 pre-update-snapshot --description "Before patching" # Snapshot with RAM qm snapshot 100 with-ram --vmstate 1 # List snapshots qm listsnapshot 100 # Rollback to snapshot qm rollback 100 pre-update-snapshot ... Snapshots in Proxmox VE are a powerful, lightweight tool to protect against misconfiguration, errors, or failed upgrades.