14.15.2. Managing Snapshots

--redefine specifies that if all XML elements produced by snapshot-dumpxml are valid; it can be used to migrate snapshot hierarchy from one machine to another, to recreate hierarchy for the case of a transient domain that goes away and is later recreated with the same name and UUID, or to make slight alterations in the snapshot metadata (such as host-specific aspects of the domain XML embedded in the snapshot). When this option is supplied, the xmlfile argument is mandatory, and the domain’s current snapshot will not be altered unless the --current option is also given.

--no-metadata creates the snapshot, but any metadata is immediately discarded (that is, libvirt does not treat the snapshot as current, and cannot revert to the snapshot unless --redefine is later used to teach libvirt about the metadata again).

--reuse-external, if used, this option specifies the location of an existing external XML snapshot to use. If an existing external snapshot does not already exist, the command will fail to take a snapshot to avoid losing contents of the existing files.