How do I animate a server snapshot on my home computer?

Question

linux

Good evening. Right to the point: there is a working server with web projects, Debian 7. The hoster provides the ability to download snapshots of the state through its panel, while downloading something in .raw format. I want to deploy a snapshot on my machine, to conduct utopian experiments to improve the configuration, so as not to break the production server. Point me in the right direction please

Answer 1

If the file is .raw, then it is most likely qemu format. Install KVM / qemu hypervisor and deploy the file and work

Answer 2

So it may be easier to raise a virtual machine at home on VirtualBox, install the same bare Debian 7 on it, and then synchronize the root partition with rsync, except for the /proc, /dev, /sys folders (and others, if necessary).