More control over automatic snapshots (SmartGuard)

It is useful to have the SmartGuard system managing snaphots and maintaining a maximum of N Smartguard snapshots at any given time. However, sometimes it's desirable to take snapshots at critical points in time. Currently this can only be done by manually taking a non-smartguard snapshots, which leaves the user with a mix of smartguard snaphots (which are automatically recycled) and manual snapshots (which must be manually deleted).

It would be very useful to be able to manually take a SmartGuard snapshot. Or, alternately, to "tag" particular snapshots as being managed by smartguard or not managed by smartguard.

 

Please provide the means for SmartGuard snapshots to occur when I'm NOT running a VM on a schedule I choose. I am constantly interrupted by Parallels 11, 12, 13 to take a SmartGuard snapshot when I'm in the middle of doing something critical on Windows 10.

Instead allow me to pick a time like 9:00pm or 3:00am for these to occur and then let me use my Windows 10 VMs without interruption.

 

Users have been asking for this feature since v4!!!! It's ludicrous that this feature has not made its way into a build yet.

 

Yes! Please, make a schedule for SmartGuard backup!

 

This is very similar to the "SmartGuard snapshot should not initiate while deletion of existing snapshot is in progress" request.

 

I cannot find in my Parallels 13 manual anything indicating that manual snapshots will not be recycled by Smartguard. Can anyone confirm that this is true? I want to be able to save snapshots from key development stages until the development is complete, while using Smartguard to guard against daily issues.

 

I do the same. Only the smartguard snapshots are recycled; the manual ones are left untouched.

 

Thanks. I will run with that plan.

 

Absolutely need the ability to schedule this. Deletes are often taking in excess of an hour. I need to do this after hours.

 

Writing this response waiting for my work VM to finish the snapshot. Please for the love of God put this feature out. This is absolutely ridiculous a scheduling aspect hasn't been built into v14. I wish someone from support would respond with either what is delaying this feature or where it is in the product roadmap. It needs to be on there.

 

Can you allow to schedule creation of snapshot at certain times during the day? It takes a very long time to create this and it always chooses to do it in the middle fo my day so I get "deleting snapshot..." for a very long time and I can't work.

 

+1

Ridicolous :-( Like others ignored by Paralles. If there only would be a better alternative ...

 

Sometimes automatic snapshot creation comes at a very impractical moment, such as during intense file operations or some other situation.
Parallels only allows the user to postpone the creation for a short period of time, and also the countdown is very short.
I would like to suggest the following:
Give the user full control over
- countdown time: 10 seconds .... 30 minutes (sic)
- give the user the options in the dialog box:
1. create snapshot now,
2. delay snapshop creation/snapshot prompt by 10 minutes ... up to 24 hours (in case the next snapshot is scheduled earlier, skip),
3. skip this snapshot (and show information when the next snapshot is scheduled
4. pause the automatic snapshot engine entirely for 10 minutes ... 24 hours ... permanently

And very import, give the user the option that a snapshot will never be created completely automatically, but only after the user clicks "create now". I.e. now countdown, just a user prompt at the time when a snapshot is due.

Thank you, this would be of great use!

 

Ditto on this. Crazy that they don't have the ability to schedule this after hours. I use the native Mac apps for anything I can, but certain things have to be in Windows - which is why I bought parallels in the first place! The snapshot process takes 15-30 minutes even though I am running it on all-flash storage and it seems to always pick the worst time to do it. If the popup notification is hidden by another app, all I know about it happening is all of my W10 windows go gray suddenly. Sometimes this has occurred while I am on the phone assisting a user. Any other backup or snapshot built into a product allows them to be scheduled.

 

As part of this, it would be great if SmartGuard also showed when the next automated snapshot would occur. Then we can decide if we want to take a SmartGuard snapshot now or wait.

I've also filed a related feature request: It would be great if we could tell SmartGuard not to take snapshots while the VM is running. https://forum.parallels.com/threads/smartguard-option-delay-if-vm-is-running.361096/
I suspect that one of the reasons we would want to trigger SmartGuard snapshots is so they *don't* happen once the machine is booted.

 

Thanks for sharing the information...

 

Hello,
I was thinking about this problem and I had an idea how Parallels could easily give the user control WITHOUT additing complicated options and settings:

===> In menu "ACTIONS", simply add the new command "Create Smart Guard Snapshot" in addition to "Create Snapshot". The new command should only be available if a Smart Guard Snapshot has been skipped by the user. As soon as an automatic snapshot has been created, the menu item would disappear. One could even "hide" this cool feature by making it appear only when Shift is pressed down.

Please give this request a thumbs up, I think this would be REALLY helpful for data safety and overall a huge improvement on the Smart Guard system.