Proxmox-AutoSnapShot

Create User & Group with Permissions

You need to create a user in Proxmox with permissions for VM.Audit and VM.Snapshot.

Create a custom role named Snapshot that includes these two privileges.

Then, create a group named Snapshot and assign the Snapshot role to the group on the /vms path.

Create API Token

Create an API token for the user snapshot@pve with the name AutoSnap.

In the script, configure the following variables:

• API_Token_ID should be snapshot@pve!AutoSnap
• API_Token_Secret should be the token secret (⚠️ shown only once when the token is created in Proxmox)

Run via systemd Timer

Example .service and .timer units are provided in the systemd folder.

To enable the systemd timers:

ln -s /opt/autosnap/systemd/autosnap.service /etc/systemd/system/autosnap.service
ln -s /opt/autosnap/systemd/autosnap.timer /etc/systemd/system/autosnap.timer
ln -s /opt/autosnap/systemd/cleanup.service /etc/systemd/system/cleanup.service
ln -s /opt/autosnap/systemd/cleanup.timer /etc/systemd/system/cleanup.timer
chmod +x /opt/autosnap/autosnap.sh
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now autosnap.timer
systemctl enable --now cleanup.timer

In this example, snapshots are taken every 15 minutes from Monday to Friday between 06:00 and 18:00.
Cleanup runs daily at 05:00 in the morning.

Function Description

This script creates snapshots of running VMs on a Proxmox server.

Snapshot names follow the format: autosnap-YYYYMMDDHHMM.

The script checks if a snapshot with the current timestamp already exists and deletes old ones based on the retention policy.

• Snapshots are taken every 15 minutes.
• Snapshots from the last 2 hours are all kept.
• From 2 to 3 hours ago, only snapshots at HH:00 and HH:30 are kept.
• Older than 3 hours: only snapshots at HH:00 are kept.
• Snapshots not from today are deleted.

The script checks if a VM is locked before creating or deleting snapshots.

The script can also be run with the -clean parameter to only delete old snapshots without creating new ones.

Parameters

No parameter

Running /opt/autosnap/autosnap.sh will create a snapshot.

The timestamp is rounded down to the last 15-minute mark and used as the snapshot name.

Example: If the current time is 16.05.2025 09:23, the snapshot name will be autosnap-202505160915.

Every full hour, a cleanup is performed before taking a new snapshot.

-clean parameter

Only cleanup is performed, no new snapshots are created.

Retention policy:

• Keep all snapshots from the last hour.
• Between 1–3 hours: keep only those taken at HH:00 and HH:30.
• Older than 3 hours: keep only hourly snapshots.
• Delete all snapshots not from today.

Only snapshots starting with autosnap- are affected. All others are ignored.

TAGS

The script supports filtering by Proxmox tags.

If enabled, only VMs with the defined tag (e.g., AutoSnapshot) will be processed.

By default, tag filtering is disabled and all running VMs are included.