Viewing Snapshot Lineage

Capturing and restoring snapshots of an application instance can create a complex tree of snapshots with multiple branches. You can view this tree in the Snapshot Display Panel.

About this task

Every time you restore an instance from a previous snapshot, you create a branch: an alternative runtime path that starts from the snapshotted application state. The collection of all these branches for a given instance form a tree, much like the tree formed by a software revision control system (but different in some important ways).

Tracing back through the tree from a snapshot or from the running process determines the lineage of the snapshot.

The Snapshot Display Panel displays this tree as the Snapshot Tree Graph, where each node represents one snapshot and the edge between two nodes represents the continuous running of the instance in the time between the two snapshots. See Instance Detail Console for an image containing the Snapshot Display Panel.

The X-axis in the Snapshot Display Panel is a time scale running from left side of the display (earlier) to the right side (later). A snapshot is located along the X-axis at the point when it was captured. If the instance's process is running, an animated icon at the right edge of the display represents the Snapshot Tree Graph. If the instance has no process running, the rightmost node represents the latest snapshot taken.

Note: The X-axis is not to scale. The axis shows the relative order in which snapshots were taken, but is not proportional to the time values.

The following procedure describes how to zoom in on a single snapshot in the tree, illustrating how to use all the controls in the Snapshot Display Panel.

Procedure

  1. Choose an instance and select the tree view in the Snapshot Display Panel as described in Viewing Snapshots.
  2. From the View Selector Buttons, click the Timeline Button.
    The initial view in the Snapshot Display Panel shows all the instance's snapshots. The time scale goes from the earliest snapshot (on the left) to the latest snapshot; or, if the process is running, to the current time (on the right).
  3. Click and hold the zoom slider at the bottom of the screen, then mouse left or right to pan and zoom in the timeline. Try zooming in on a single snapshot in the display, then zoom back out to view the entire Snapshot Tree Graph.
  4. Click the Show Tree Toggle to collapse the Snapshot Tree Graph down to the Current Lineage Timeline.
    If the instance is running, the Current Lineage Timeline shows the lineage of the running instance. If the instance is not running, the Current Lineage Timeline shows the lineage of the currently selected snapshot.