We are now allowing customer testing of Archive and Restore from our cloud-shell management console (https://secure.grokthis.net/manage/vps).  Currently, only our FURY and RORSCHACH nodes have this feature enabled, other nodes will be upgraded to support this during a future scheduled maintenance window.

The process is quite simple, once you login to the shell you should see the standard cloud-shell command prompt:

cloud-shell>

To archive and snapshot your instance, simply run, archive.  Note that this will briefly take your instance offline.

cloud-shell> archive
Archiving instance: 000
Instance running. Proceeding.
NOTE: Your instance will now be paused.
 This will briefly take your instance offline (~0-60 min)
4 GB 01:01:01 [17 MB/s] [======> ]  100%  ETA 0:00:00
192 MB 01:01:01 [17 MB/s] [=====>]  100%  ETA 0:00:00
0+N records in
0+N records out
Your instance has been resumed.
cloud-shell>

To restore from your archive, first shutdown the instance, then execute restore:

cloud-shell> shutdown
cloud-shell> status
Guest: shutdown
cloud-shell> restore
4 GB 01:01:01 [17 MB/s] [======> ]  100%  ETA 0:00:00
192 MB 01:01:01 [17 MB/s] [=====>]  100%  ETA 0:00:00
0+N records in
0+N records out
Your instance has been restored to its prior state.
cloud-shell>

The restore command will return your instance to the last stored archive. This includes disk block storage, swap, and RAM.  There should be no need to manually boot the instance after a restore.