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Create a Snapshot

  1. Open the Thunder Compute sidebar panel.
  2. Right click the running instance.
  3. Select Create Snapshot.
  4. Name the new snapshot.
Step by step on creating a snapshot Snapshotting happens in the background—you can continue using your instance immediately. The snapshot captures the exact state at the moment you initiated it.

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View Snapshots

Your snapshots appear in the Thunder Compute panel below your instances.

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Restore from a Snapshot

  1. Create a new instance.
  2. Open the template menu.
  3. Select your snapshot.
Step by step on restoring a snapshot
Restoring from a snapshot can take up to 8 minutes per 100GB of data.

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Delete a Snapshot

  1. Open the Thunder Compute sidebar panel.
  2. Right click the snapshot.
  3. Select Delete Snapshot.
Step by step on deleting a snapshot

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Best Practices

  1. Name snapshots descriptively: Include the project, date, or purpose (e.g., llama-finetuned-jan2026)
  2. Clean up unused snapshots: To minimize your bill, remove snapshots you no longer need.

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Snapshots vs External Backups

Snapshots are great for quickly restoring your environment, but they’re meant for convenience rather than long-term data security. We do not provide explicit guarantees about snapshot durability. For long-term data preservation, consider using:
  • GitHub for code and configuration
  • Local downloads for important outputs
  • Cloud storage (R2, Google Drive) for large files
To learn about optimizing the a snapshot for faster creation and restoration, refer to our Speeding Up Snapshots guide.