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# About volumes

A volume represents a logical disk provisioned from a storage pool on a storage system. You can attach volumes to one or more servers by configuring a volume attachment in the server profile. The volume attachment manages volume presentation on the storage system ( StoreServ port selection, host and vlun creation) as well as SAN zoning on SANs (with automatic zoning enabled) that connect the server and storage system.

Using volume templates, you can create multiple volumes with the same configuration.

You can increase (grow) the capacity of a volume by editing it. You cannot decrease the capacity of a volume.

## About snapshots

A snapshot is a virtual copy of an existing volume at a point in time. You can use a snapshot as a backup of a volume, and then use the snapshot to revert a volume to the backup, or to create new volumes from the snapshot.

A snapshot is a static copy of a volume at the point the snapshot is created. Snapshots are not updated to reflect changes in the volume since the snapshot was taken.

A new volume created from a snapshot will be the same size as the snapshot and will contain all of the data in the snapshot. The new volume has no relationship with the volume that was used to create the snapshot.

Reverting a volume to a snapshot will revert to the data the volume contained when the snapshot was taken. The size of the volume will remain the same as when it was reverted. For example, if you take a snapshot of a 50 GiB volume, grow the volume to 100 GiB, and then revert to the snapshot, the volume will be 100 GiB with the data from the 50 GiB snapshot.

Reverting to a snapshot of a volume will cause all data created or changed since the snapshot was taken to be lost. Backup your data to prevent data loss.

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