CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Test 2025 - Free CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Questions and Study Guide

Snapshots are an essential tool in virtualization environments, allowing you to capture the state of a virtual server at a specific moment in time. When you create a snapshot, it preserves the entire state of the virtual machine, including its disk, memory, and device states. This enables you to revert the virtual server back to that particular point if needed, effectively restoring it to its previous state before any changes were made.

The capability to revert using snapshots is particularly useful during software updates or testing new applications, as it allows for safe experimentation without the risk of permanent changes to the virtual server. If something goes wrong during an update or installation, you can quickly revert to the pre-update state using the snapshot.

While backups, images, and archives serve important roles in data protection and recovery, they do not function the same way as snapshots for immediate state reversion. Backups typically involve creating copies of data and configurations for long-term storage, while images are often full copies of a virtual machine that can be used for deployment, not necessarily quick reversion. Archives refer to stored data that is usually not in active use, further highlighting the distinct purpose of snapshots in virtualization.