vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
A [fast restore snapshot](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-restore&interface=uisnapshots-vpc-use-fast-restore) is a clone of a snapshot that is stored within one or more zones of a VPC region. The original snapshot is stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage. When you perform a restore, data can be restored faster from a clone than from the snapshot in Object Storage.
* How many snapshots can I take?

You can take up to 750 snapshots per volume in a region. Deleting snapshots from this quota makes space for more snapshots. A snapshot of a volume cannot be greater than 10 TB. Also, consider how your [billing changes](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-aboutsnapshots_vpc_considerations) when you increase the number of snapshots that you take and retain.
* Is there a limit on the size of a volume that I can take a snapshot of?

The maximum size of a volume is 10 TB. Snapshot creation fails if the volume is over that limit.
* How secure are snapshots?

Snapshots are stored and retrieved from IBM Cloud Object Storage. Data is encrypted while in transit and stored in the same region as the original volume.

Snapshots retain the encryption from the original volume, IBM-managed or customer-managed.
* What happens when I restore a volume from a snapshot?

Restoring a volume from a snapshot creates an entirely new boot or data volume. The new volume has the same properties of the original volume, including encryption. If you restore from a bootable snapshot, you create a boot volume. Similarly, you can create a data volume from a snapshot of a data volume. The volume that you create from the snapshot uses the same volume profile and contains the same data and metadata as the original volume.
* UI
* CLI
* API
* Terraform







 Restoring a volume from a backup snapshot 

Restoring from a backup snapshot creates a fully provisioned boot or data volume that you can use to boot an instance or attach as auxiliary storage. You can restore volumes during instance creation or when you want to create stand-alone boot or data volumes to be used later. You can restore a data volume to add more storage to an existing instance. You can use backup snapshots to restore volumes in a different region for business continuity purposes or geographic expansion. You can restore volumes from backup snapshots in the UI, from the CLI, with the API, or Terraform.



 About restoring a volume from a backup snapshot 

When you restore a volume from a backup, the service creates another volume. The restored volume inherits the same [profile](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-block-storage-profiles), capacity, data, and metadata as the original volume. However, you can choose a different profile and capacity if you prefer. If the source volume used [customer-managed encryption](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-vpc-encryption-aboutvpc-customer-managed-encryption), the new volume inherits that encryption.

Restoring a volume from a backup snapshot creates a boot or data volume, depending on whether the snapshot is bootable or nonbootable. The volume appears first as pending while it's being created. During the restoration, your data is copied from IBM Cloud® Object Storage to Block Storage for VPC. After the volume is hydrated (fully provisioned), you can use the new boot or data volume. For more information about how performance is affected during restoration, see [Performance impact when backup snapshots are used](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-baas-vpc-restorebaas-performance-considerations).

For best performance, use backups with fast restore. You can enable fast restore backup snapshots in multiple zones and use them to restore a volume that is fully provisioned when the volume is created.
You can also restore a fully provisioned volume by using the [fast restore feature](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-aboutsnapshots-fast-restore) after initial provisioning.

Snapshots have a lifecycle that is independent from the source Block Storage for VPC volume. You can delete the original volume and the snapshot persists. However, do not detach the volume from the instance during snapshot creation. You need to wait until the snapshot is stable before you detach, otherwise you can't reattach the volume to an instance. Snapshots are crash-consistent. If the virtual server stops for any reason, the snapshot data is safe on the disk.

Cost for snapshots is calculated based on GB capacity that is stored per month, unless the duration is less than one month. Because the snapshot is based on the capacity that was provisioned for the original volume, the snapshot capacity does not vary.

With IBM Cloud® Identity and Access Management, you can set up resource groups in your account to provide user-access to your snapshots. Your IAM role determines whether you can create and manage snapshots. For more information, see [IAM roles for creating and managing snapshots](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-managesnapshots-vpc-iam).

Before you take a snapshot, make sure that all cached data is present on disk, especially when you're taking snapshots of instances with Windows and Linux® operating systems. For example, on Linux operating systems, run the sync command to force an immediate write of all cached data to disk.

For customers with special access, data isolation is provided to store snapshots that you created from your dedicated hosts. With data isolation's extra security, your data is encrypted at rest with a unique key and access to your data is protected by a private firewall.





 How snapshots work 

When you take a snapshot, read and write operations from your virtual server instance to the volume continue uninterrupted.
The volume can be restored to another virtual server instance, to a temporary database that is created from the backup snapshot, and the deleted file or dropped table can be restored.

You can also restore the snapshots to a higher capacity and IOPS profiles and not necessarily to the same volume profiles as the source volume.





 Taking manual snapshots of your 3-tier applications 

A bootable snapshot can be taken for the web, app, and db machines. A non-bootable snapshot can be taken for the database block storage. To get a crash consistent snapshots for critical applications like databases, quiesce the database.

You can create snapshots either from Cloud UI, or with CLI or API. For more information, see [Creating Snapshots](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-create). After the first snapshot, all additional snapshots are incremental.





 Scheduling snapshots 

Snapshots can be scheduled by running an API through a cron job. However, before you run the API you need to create a service ID and retrieve the access token. For more information, see [Retrieving an access token](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/key-protect?topic=key-protect-retrieve-access-token) for creating the service ID and retrieving the access token.

After the service ID is set up, the iam token can be retrieved programmatically and the token can be passed to API call, for creating the snapshots. For more information, see [API documentation for snapshots](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpccreate-snapshot). The process of quiescing your apps, retrieving the access token, and passing the token to API for creating the snapshots, can be scripted and passed to a cron job. You can create a schedule to delete the snapshots as well.





 Restoring Snapshots 

You can restore the volumes either boot or data volumes from the snapshots that were created earlier.
* GET /security_groups now supports vpc.crn and vpc.name filters









 17 April 2020 



 For all version dates 

IBM Cloud interprets volume capacity units in gibibytes, but the API documentation used gigabytes. This issue is now resolved in the documentation.







 10 April 2020 



 For all version dates 

Usage recommendations are provided for the following load balancer properties:



* protocol property for load balancer pools
* type property for load balancer pool health monitors



The guidance notes that new values for these properties might be added in the future, and unexpected values are handled gracefully. See the [load balancers API](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpclist-load-balancers).







 6 February 2020 



 For all version dates 

Support is temporarily suspended for creating instances from an existing boot volume. This feature was available through the API only, with no CLI or UI support. In the interim, you must specify the image property when you call POST /instances.

You can still create instances that reference existing data volumes.







 3 December 2019 



 For all version dates 

Device IDs are now shown when you retrieve an instance's volume attachments.







 26 November 2019 



 For all version dates 

This API release supports the following changes:



* [Network access control list (ACL)](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpclist-network-acls) methods
* Instance filtering by VPC









 21 November 2019 



 For all version dates 

A VPC’s cloud service endpoint source IPs now appear in output. Learn about [cloud service endpoint source addresses](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-vpc-behind-the-curtaincse-source-addresses) and how [DNS resolves shared cloud service endpoints](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-service-endpoints-for-vpcdns-domain-name-system-resolver-endpoints).







 5 November 2019 



 For all version dates 

This API release supports the following changes:
You can also restore a fully provisioned volume by using the [fast restore feature](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-about&interface=apisnapshots-fast-restore) after initial provisioning.

Snapshots have a lifecycle that is independent from the source Block Storage for VPC volume. You can delete the original volume and the snapshot persists. However, do not detach the volume from the instance during snapshot creation. You need to wait until the snapshot is stable before you detach, otherwise you can't reattach the volume to an instance. Snapshots are crash-consistent. If the virtual server stops for any reason, the snapshot data is safe on the disk.

Cost for snapshots is calculated based on GB capacity that is stored per month, unless the duration is less than one month. Because the snapshot is based on the capacity that was provisioned for the original volume, the snapshot capacity does not vary.

With IBM Cloud® Identity and Access Management, you can set up resource groups in your account to provide user-access to your snapshots. Your IAM role determines whether you can create and manage snapshots. For more information, see [IAM roles for creating and managing snapshots](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-managesnapshots-vpc-iam).

Before you take a snapshot, make sure that all cached data is present on disk, especially when you're taking snapshots of instances with Windows and Linux® operating systems. For example, on Linux operating systems, run the sync command to force an immediate write of all cached data to disk.

For customers with special access, data isolation is provided to store snapshots that you created from your dedicated hosts. With data isolation's extra security, your data is encrypted at rest with a unique key and access to your data is protected by a private firewall.





 How snapshots work
* Security groups must now be associated with targets rather than network interfaces.



: Even if you are not planning to use reserved IPs, to avoid regressions in client functionality, be sure to reference [2022-03-29 API migration](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-2022-03-29-migration) and follow the Action needed recommendations before you specify version 2022-03-29 or later. For more information, see the [API change log](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-api-change-logversion-2022-03-29) and [Reserved IP known issues](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-known-issuesip-known-issues).





 7 April 2022 

Backup for VPC (limited availability)
: For accounts authorized to preview this service, you can create backup policies that automatically back up your block storage volumes. Backups are triggered when a user tag is applied to a volume matches a backup policy tag. Each backup policy has a backup plan, which defines how often backups are taken and how long they're retained. With this release, you can create and update up to four backup plans per policy. You can also track backup job status when a backup is created. For more information, see [About Backup for VPC](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-backup-service-about).







 March 2022 



 31 March 2022 

Add "Other" device types as Application Load Balancer (ALB) pool members
: You can now add "Other" device types as ALB back-end pool members, such as servers contained within a Power Systems Virtual Server instance connected over IBM Cloud Direct Link. In the past, you were only able to select virtual server instances or Bare Metal servers within a VPC. When you create a new member, select the Other tab from the Attach server screen and enter the device IP address.
* UI
* CLI
* API
* Terraform







 Restoring a volume from a backup snapshot 

Restoring from a backup snapshot creates a fully provisioned boot or data volume that you can use to boot an instance or attach as auxiliary storage. You can restore volumes during instance creation or when you want to create stand-alone boot or data volumes to be used later. You can restore a data volume to add more storage to an existing instance. You can use backup snapshots to restore volumes in a different region for business continuity purposes or geographic expansion. You can restore volumes from backup snapshots in the UI, from the CLI, with the API, or Terraform.



 About restoring a volume from a backup snapshot 

When you restore a volume from a backup, the service creates another volume. The restored volume inherits the same [profile](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-block-storage-profiles), capacity, data, and metadata as the original volume. However, you can choose a different profile and capacity if you prefer. If the source volume used [customer-managed encryption](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-vpc-encryption-aboutvpc-customer-managed-encryption), the new volume inherits that encryption.

Restoring a volume from a backup snapshot creates a boot or data volume, depending on whether the snapshot is bootable or nonbootable. The volume appears first as pending while it's being created. During the restoration, your data is copied from IBM Cloud® Object Storage to Block Storage for VPC. After the volume is hydrated (fully provisioned), you can use the new boot or data volume. For more information about how performance is affected during restoration, see [Performance impact when backup snapshots are used](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-baas-vpc-restore&interface=uibaas-performance-considerations).

For best performance, use backups with fast restore.
[Object Storage](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cloud-object-storage?topic=cloud-object-storage-about-cloud-object-storage) is an alternative storage option that is useful for certain use cases, including backup and recovery, data archiving, cloud-native application building, and AI and big data analytics. Object Storage stores encrypted and dispersed data across multiple geographic locations.

By default, all objects that are stored in Object Storage are encrypted by using randomly generated keys and an all-or-nothing-transform (AONT). While this default encryption model provides at-rest security, financial service workloads need full control over the data encryption keys used. Again, Hyper Protect Crypto Services should be used for this purpose.







 Using IBM Cloud services outside of a VPC 

To connect to IBM Cloud services from your VPC, you need to use [Virtual Private Endpoints (VPE) for VPC](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-about-vpe). In the reference architecture diagram, VPEs appear in the middle subnets of the workload VPC. With VPEs, you can connect to supported IBM Cloud services from your VPC network by using the IP addresses of your choosing, which is allocated from a subnet within your VPC.

VPE is an evolution of the private connectivity to IBM Cloud services. VPEs are virtual IP interfaces that are bound to an endpoint gateway created on a per service, or service instance, basis (depending on the service operation model). The endpoint gateway is a virtualized function that scales horizontally, is redundant and highly available, and spans all availability zones of your VPC. Endpoint gateways enable communications from virtual server instances within your VPC and IBM Cloud service on the private backbone. VPE for VPC gives you the experience of controlling all the private addressing within your cloud.







 Variation with edge/transit VPC for public internet access 

You might want to allow consumers to access your service through the public internet. This base architecture can be adapted to securely enable this type of access as shown in the following diagram, which introduces a new edge VPC.
A [fast restore snapshot](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-restore&interface=uisnapshots-vpc-use-fast-restore) is a clone of a snapshot that is stored within one or more zones of a VPC region. The original snapshot is stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage. When you perform a restore, data can be restored faster from a clone than from the snapshot in Object Storage.





 How many snapshots can I take? 

You can take up to 750 snapshots per volume in a region. Deleting snapshots from this quota makes space for more snapshots. A snapshot of a volume cannot be greater than 10 TB. Also, consider how your [billing changes](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-aboutsnapshots_vpc_considerations) when you increase the number of snapshots that you take and retain.





 Is there a limit on the size of a volume that I can take a snapshot of? 

The maximum size of a volume is 10 TB. Snapshot creation fails if the volume is over that limit.





 How secure are snapshots? 

Snapshots are stored and retrieved from IBM Cloud Object Storage. Data is encrypted while in transit and stored in the same region as the original volume.

Snapshots retain the encryption from the original volume, IBM-managed or customer-managed.





 What happens when I restore a volume from a snapshot? 

Restoring a volume from a snapshot creates an entirely new boot or data volume. The new volume has the same properties of the original volume, including encryption. If you restore from a bootable snapshot, you create a boot volume. Similarly, you can create a data volume from a snapshot of a data volume. The volume that you create from the snapshot uses the same volume profile and contains the same data and metadata as the original volume.
You can also restore a fully provisioned volume by using the [fast restore feature](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-about&interface=uisnapshots-fast-restore) after initial provisioning.

Snapshots have a lifecycle that is independent from the source Block Storage for VPC volume. You can delete the original volume and the snapshot persists. However, do not detach the volume from the instance during snapshot creation. You need to wait until the snapshot is stable before you detach, otherwise you can't reattach the volume to an instance. Snapshots are crash-consistent. If the virtual server stops for any reason, the snapshot data is safe on the disk.

Cost for snapshots is calculated based on GB capacity that is stored per month, unless the duration is less than one month. Because the snapshot is based on the capacity that was provisioned for the original volume, the snapshot capacity does not vary.

With IBM Cloud® Identity and Access Management, you can set up resource groups in your account to provide user-access to your snapshots. Your IAM role determines whether you can create and manage snapshots. For more information, see [IAM roles for creating and managing snapshots](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-snapshots-vpc-managesnapshots-vpc-iam).

Before you take a snapshot, make sure that all cached data is present on disk, especially when you're taking snapshots of instances with Windows and Linux® operating systems. For example, on Linux operating systems, run the sync command to force an immediate write of all cached data to disk.

For customers with special access, data isolation is provided to store snapshots that you created from your dedicated hosts. With data isolation's extra security, your data is encrypted at rest with a unique key and access to your data is protected by a private firewall.





 How snapshots work
For more information, see [Getting started with SSH keys](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-ssh-keys&interface=api). See also [Extended SSH key encryption](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-api-change-log27-june-2023) in the VPC API change log.







 14 February 2023 



 For all version dates 

VPC instance metadata new endpoint URL. You can now use the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) api.metadata.cloud.ibm.com for the metadata service endpoint. The FQDN resolves to the link-local IP address 169.254.169.254 without requiring the application of special configurations. For more information, see [Endpoint URLs](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc-metadataendpoint-url) in the VPC Instance Metadata API.

VPC instance metadata communication protocol and hop limit. You can now view the communication protocol and hop limit for IP response packets used by the [VPC Instance Metadata service](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-imd-about). When you [retrieve the instance](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc-metadataget-instance), the new protocol and response_hop_limit properties will be shown. For more information, see [Configure the instance metadata service](https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/vpc?topic=vpc-imd-configure-service&interface=api).







 27 September 2022 



 For all version dates 

Sharing images across an enterprise account. If a virtual server instance was provisioned from a catalog offering, [retrieving the instance metadata](https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/vpc-metadataget-instance) will now include a catalog_offering property in the response.