Volume snapshots in Pure Storage Data Services are immutable, point-in-time images of the contents of one or more volumes. Volume snapshots can be created individually or as a part of a protection group. A protection group ensures that the snapshots created of volumes within it are consistent with one another.  Volume snapshots are always thin-provisioned, deduplicated, compressed and require no snapshot capacity reservations. All volumes (and by extension snapshots) are thin provisioned and a part of a global deduplication namespace, further reducing the storage space consumed. With snapshots as the data movers in the data fabric, it reduces data sprawl, silos and it can all be easily automated.