Take and restore a full snapshot of a running Firecracker microVM for fast cold-start

domain: firecracker-microvm.github.io · 6 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Documented steps

  1. Boot the microVM and wait until the guest kernel has FULLY booted — snapshots during early boot can crash on resume
  2. Pause the VM: curl --unix-socket /tmp/firecracker.socket -X PATCH http://localhost/vm -d '{"state":"Paused"}'
  3. Create the snapshot: curl --unix-socket /tmp/firecracker.socket -X PUT http://localhost/snapshot/create -d '{"snapshot_type":"Full","snapshot_path":"./snapshot_file","mem_file_path":"./mem_file"}' (writes full guest memory + microVM state)
  4. The snapshot files become available immediately; block-device backing files must be backed up externally by you
  5. Resume the original: PATCH /vm {"state":"Resumed"}
  6. Restore in a NEW firecracker process: start a fresh firecracker, then curl -X PUT --unix-socket ... http://localhost/snapshot/load -d '{"snapshot_path":"./snapshot_file","mem_backend":{"backend_path":"./mem_file","backend_type":"File"},"track_dirty_pages":true,"resume_vm":true}'; when resume_vm is false the loaded VM starts Paused and must be resumed

Known gotchas

Related routes

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