Schedule nightly snapshots

If you remember nothing else from these docs: turn on automatic snapshots for every pod that holds data you can't reproduce. It is one field, it saves itself, and keeping snapshots costs nothing.

What you get

Automatic snapshots run on a fixed schedule. Three presets are available, all at 3:00 AM UTC:

• Daily - every day.
• Weekly - every Sunday.
• Monthly - the 1st of every month.

Disabled is the fourth option, and where every pod starts.

One of the pod's five slots is held back for the schedule, so a full set of manual snapshots never stops it running. Automatic snapshots rotate among themselves and fill whatever your manual ones leave free: with four manual snapshots there is room for one automatic one and each run replaces the last, and with none you keep five days of dailies before the oldest rotates out. Your manual snapshots are never touched by the schedule.

1. Get to the pod's Snapshots tab

1. Open Pods in the console, or click Pods in the side panel. You land on the pods table.
2. Click the pod's name in the Name column. The name is the link, not the row. (Search pods... above the table filters by name if the list is long.)
3. You land on the pod's page, on the Overview tab. Under the pod's name is a strip of tabs: Overview, Metrics, Snapshots, Backups, Networking, Connection Strings.
4. Click Snapshots. An info panel at the top says what a snapshot captures, and under it is a bar holding a New button on the left and an Auto schedule field on the right. The snapshots you already have are in the table below, with columns Name, Type, Status and Created - or "No snapshots yet" on a pod that has never had one.

2. Set the schedule

1. Find Auto schedule, on the right of that bar. It reads "Select schedule" until you set one.
2. Open it and pick Daily. Each option spells out its cadence, so Daily reads "Every day at 3:00 AM UTC".

That is the whole job. There is no Save button - picking is the saving, and "Snapshot schedule updated" confirms it. The field then reads Daily instead of "Select schedule".

Weekly and Monthly work the same way, and choosing Disabled turns it back off. Daily is the right answer for anything with a database behind it; weekly is defensible for a pod whose contents barely change.

The first automatic snapshot is created at the next scheduled run, so nothing appears in the table tonight. When it lands, its row shows Type Auto.

Want a restore point right now?

Click New, on the left of that same bar. There is no form to fill in - we name the snapshot for you. It lands in a few seconds to a minute, moving from Status pending to Available, and its Type reads Manual. The schedule never rotates that one out.

Via the API

curl -X PUT https://cloud-api.microapps.io/api/pods/$POD_ID/snapshot-schedule \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"schedule":"daily"}'

schedule accepts "" (disabled), "daily", "weekly", or "monthly". Full reference: snapshots API.

Restoring from an automatic snapshot

When you need to roll back:

1. Open Pods, click the pod's name, then the Snapshots tab.
2. Find the automatic snapshot in the table - the one whose Type reads Auto.
3. Click Restore at the end of its row. It stays greyed out unless that row's Status reads Available.
4. Read the Restore snapshot dialog, which warns you that anything written since the snapshot will be lost, and click Restore.

The pod can be Running or Stopped - no need to stop it first; if it is running, the dialog tells you it gets shut down automatically. It rewinds in place, shows Restoring while it works, and stays stopped when it finishes - start it again when you're ready.

WARNING

Restoring overwrites everything written after the snapshot was taken. If you want to keep both, take a manual snapshot of the current state first (New, on the same tab), then restore.

Combining with manual snapshots

Every pod gets 5 snapshot slots: 4 you fill by hand, and 1 held back for the schedule. Hitting the manual limit does not stop the nightly run, and the nightly run never costs you a manual slot. Delete a manual snapshot when you want room for another.

Out of manual slots? Delete one first: click the trash icon at the end of a row, then Delete in the Delete snapshot dialog. Deleting cannot be undone.

Use manual snapshots for "before I do this risky thing" moments, and let the automatic schedule handle routine backups.

Do the same on the Backups tab

A snapshot rewinds this pod. If the pod itself is gone, so are its snapshots. A backup is an off-node copy that restores as a new pod, and it is one tab over: Backups, with the same New button, the same Auto schedule field, and the same Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Disabled options at 3:00 AM UTC.

Belt and braces for anything holding data you can't recreate: an auto snapshot and an auto backup. Both are free. Snapshots & backups has the full comparison, and the backups API has the scripted version.