What is a virtual server snapshot, how is it used, and are there any guidelines I should be aware of?

A snapshot provides a TeamSpeak server administrator with the ability to create an exact copy of a single virtual server. Server snapshots are a great way to easily backup the state of a single virtual server and also serve a great purpose for moving a virtual server between server instances.

A snapshot can be taken from any server and deployed to the same or any other instance of TeamSpeak 3 server, which can run on the same or any other server in the world, regardless of the operating system.

Included are:

• All server and channel groups including their permissions
• All the channels on the server including any permissions assigned to them.
• Channel descriptions, topic, password etc.
• All clients that are present in the database for this virtual server including possibly assigned permissions.
• Server settings (server name, slots, banner etc.)

Things that are not included:

• Any Icons
• Any Avatars
• Any files that have been uploaded

General guidelines regarding snapshots

• No permission checks are performed when deploying a snapshot. This means that even though you might not be allowed to assign a certain permission, or change a certain setting, if these permissions or settings are assigned in the snapshot they will be on the resulting virtual server as well.
• The only permission required to deploy a snapshot is b_virtualserver_snapshot_deploy
• Snapshots are protected by a hash, any changes in the generated snapshot can invalidate the snapshot. Some editors automatically change the line endings for example, invalidating the snapshot in the process.
• Snapshots created with older versions of the TeamSpeak 3 server might not be able to be deployed in newer versions. This is usually the case when fundamental changes have taken place or variables have been renamed.
• If a snapshot is deployed and the original server is still running, one of the virtual servers will be shut down since each virtual server can only run once throughout all instances.

Creating a snapshot

To create a snapshot of a particular server you can use the following commands in the server query interface:

login serveradmin password
error id=0 msg=ok
use port=9987
error id=0 msg=ok
serversnapshotcreate
hash=bnTd2E1kNITHjJYRCFjgbKKO5P8=|virtualserver_name=TeamSpeak\sServer .......
error id=0 msg=ok

The chunk of text outputted by the serversnapshotcreate command is already quite large on a default server which was just created and will increase in size the more groups, channels and users that server has.

For that reason we also offer Linux shell scripts to create snapshots more easily and save them to a text file directly. 

Restoring a snapshot

A snapshot can be restored to any instance of a TeamSpeak 3 server regardless on which operating system the server that originally created the snapshot was running.

You can either replace an existing virtual server with the one represented by the snapshot, or create a new virtual server from the snapshot.

To restore a virtual server from a snapshot simply follow these steps:

login serveradmin password
error id=0 msg=ok
use port=9988 OR use 0
error id=0 msg=ok
serversnapshotdeploy {Text from the snapshot}
sid=X port=Y
error id=0 msg=ok

If you want to deploy to a new virtual server use "use 0" on line 3, otherwise specify the voice port of the virtual server you would like to replace.

In case of deploying to a new virtual server, the command will have the sid=X port=Y output, which indicates the port and server id of the newly created virtual server.

Please note that deployed snapshots will be automatically started which might fail if your license limits would be exceeded.