Backup procedures
Check Point provides three different procedures for backing up (and restoring) the operating system and networking parameters on your appliances.
• Snapshot (Revert)
• Backup (Restore)
• upgrade_export
Each of these procedures backs up certain parameters and has relative advantages (such as: file size, speed, and portability), which are fully described in this article, together with detailed instructions as to how to carry out each procedure.
Snapshot
The snapshot utility backs up everything, including the drivers, and is available only on SecurePlatform.
Snapshot can be used to backup both your firewall and management modules.
The disadvantages of this utility are that the generated file is very big, and can only be restored to the same device, and exactly the same state (same OS, same Check Point version, same patch level).
Backup
The backup utility backs up your Check Point configuration and your networking/OS system parameters (such as routing), and it is only available on SecurePlatform.
• The backup utility can be used to backup both your firewall and management modules.
• The resulting file will be smaller than the one generated by snapshot, but still pretty big.
• Backup does not include the drivers, and can be restored to different machine (as opposed to snapshot, which cannot). However, it is recommended using the backup for restore to the same machine since it includes information such as MAC addresses of the NIC interfaces.
• You only can restore it to the same OS, same Check Point version and patch level.