Updated · 2026-06-27

Backups & restore

Every VM is snapshotted daily, with a rolling retention (5 by default, set by your account entitlements). Take an on-demand backup before risky changes with create_backup; restore in place with restore_vm_from_backup (same VM, disk rewound). Destroyed VMs are recoverable for 24h via resume_vm; stopped VMs keep billing.

Superjolt protects VM data two ways, and gives destroyed VMs a recovery window.

Scheduled vs on-demand

  • Scheduled (automatic): every VM is snapshotted daily, with a rolling retention (5 by default, set by your account entitlements) — old scheduled snapshots roll off automatically. Nothing to set up; there is no schedule to attach. (You can’t delete a scheduled backup — retention governs them.)
  • On-demand: call create_backup before a risky change. On-demand snapshots persist until you delete them (delete_backup).

list_backups shows every snapshot for a VM (newest first) with its kind (scheduled / on_demand), takenAt, and sizeBytes.

Restore

restore vm-abc123 from yesterday's backup

restore_vm_from_backup replaces the rootfs and reboots the VM. It’s the same VM — same id, same IP, same ports, same attached domains. Only the disk goes back in time. Anything written since that snapshot is lost, so it’s a deliberate, destructive roll-back, not a copy.

The 24-hour graveyard

What happens to a VM’s data when it goes away depends on how:

  • stop_vm — VM is off but intact. Still billing at the tier rate; start_vm resumes instantly. (See Billing FAQ.)
  • destroy_vm — a long-lived VM moves to the graveyard: IP/RAM freed, but rootfs + backups preserved for 24 hours, recoverable with resume_vm. After 24h everything is permanently reclaimed (row, host state, domains, backups, S3 objects). A VM destroyed within its first hour of life skips the graveyard — no recovery window.
  • archived (balance hit zero) — rootfs preserved 24h; top up + resume_vm to restore.

So a destroy_vm you regret is recoverable for a day (unless it was minutes old); a top-up revives an archived VM within the same window.