The object-based architecture of the Panasas ActiveScale operating environment means that additional intelligence can be injected into all storage functions. One of these key functions is the ability to instantly backup data and to recover data in seconds not hours. Panasas ActiveImage shapshots delivers snapshot capability with the ability to go back in time to previous states of the file system.

A snapshot is effectively a point-in-time image of the data set. It can be taken instantaneously on a live file system because a snapshot is a copy of the pointers to the data on the disks, not a separate copy of the data itself. Because of this elegantly simple approach, the snapshot file is very small compared to the data it represents. Panasas uses copy-on-write technology that intelligently keeps track of just the changes made to data. The changed data blocks only are copied in the background. When a snapshot is taken, the pointers are copied to the snapshot file providing an image of the changes since the last snapshot. Multiple snapshots can be taken per volume on a scheduled or as-required basis. This allows the administrator to decide the importance of different volumes, for instance scratch volumes may not be snapshot, while project volumes may be snapshot hourly.

Panasas ActiveImage is standard on the ActiveStor 6000 Storage Cluster.