PowerStore can create point-in-time snapshots of one or more volumes. Snapshots are space-efficient since they consist of pointers to frozen data blocks and use redirect-on-write technology. They consume no extra space unless, for example, a thin clone is created from a snapshot, mapped to a host, and new data are written to the thin clone.

Snapshots can be created manually or automatically using snapshot rules within protection policies. For snapshot cleanup, a service runs hourly in the background in PowerStore and removes any expired snapshots.

To use data within a snapshot, a thin clone copy must be created from the snapshot and presented to a host. The host can be the same host from which the snapshot was taken or a different host. Changes made to the thin clone to not affect other thin clone copies of the same volume or the parent volume. See Dell PowerStore: Snapshots and Thin Clones for more information.