Restoring your dialer from a snapshot

If your VPS ends up in a bad state — a bad configuration change, a failed update, corrupted data — the fastest recovery path on a VICIfast managed plan is to restore from a Server snapshot. You pick the snapshot you want, confirm, and the system rolls the disk back. The dialer comes up in the state it was in when that snapshot was taken.

This post covers how to trigger that restore, what happens on the server during the process, how much downtime to expect, and why this feature is limited to managed VPS plans.

What a snapshot is

A Server snapshot is a point-in-time disk image of your dialer server. It captures the entire disk: the operating system, Asterisk, VICIdial, your configuration files, your Call recording audio library, leads, campaign settings, and everything else on the box at that moment. Think of it as a photograph of the entire server state.

VICIfast takes these snapshots on a scheduled basis on managed plans. You can also trigger an on-demand snapshot before making a risky change — a carrier switch, a major VICIdial configuration overhaul, or anything else you might want to undo. Because the snapshot is stored at the hypervisor level by Hetzner, it does not depend on what software is running on the box.

How to trigger a restore

From your VICIfast dashboard, navigate to your server and open the Snapshots tab. You will see a list of available restore points with timestamps. Select the one you want, click Restore, and confirm the prompt. The platform handles everything from there.

• Your server powers off — active calls will be dropped at this point.
• The disk is replaced with the snapshot image. This is done at the Hetzner infrastructure layer, so it does not depend on anything running inside the box.
• The server boots from the restored disk. VICIdial and Asterisk start up as normal.
• Your Branded subdomain and Provisioning configuration remain intact — the DNS record and TLS certificate are not affected by the disk restore.

How the process flows

flowchart TD
  A[Pick snapshot from list] --> B[Click Restore and confirm]
  B --> C[Server powers off]
  C --> D[Hetzner replaces disk with snapshot]
  D --> E[Server boots from restored disk]
  E --> F[VICIdial starts up]
  F --> G[Dialer running at restore point state]

Downtime to expect

The restore itself typically takes a few minutes — the bulk of the time is the disk image transfer at the infrastructure layer. Boot time for a VICIdial box adds another minute or two on top. Plan for roughly five to ten minutes of downtime from the moment you confirm the restore to when agents can log back in. The exact duration depends on the size of the snapshot.

Why this is managed-only

Snapshots work because VICIfast owns the Hetzner VPS hypervisor layer. The snapshot is taken and stored by Hetzner at the infrastructure level, and the restore operation is an API call from VICIfast to Hetzner to swap the disk. We cannot do any of that on a server we do not control.

If you are on the self-hosted BYOI plan — where VICIfast installs and manages VICIdial on a server you own — snapshot and restore are not available. Your server belongs to you and your cloud provider, and they handle backup natively. You would use your provider's snapshot tools directly.

For an overview of everything the managed platform handles that raw VICIdial does not, see what VICIfast adds to VICIdial. For the scheduled snapshot feature that creates the restore points, see scheduled snapshots on VICIfast. Managed plan pricing is on the pricing page.