Techniques are provided for incrementally restoring a virtual machine hosted by a computing environment. In response to receiving an indication that the virtual machine is to be incrementally restored, a snapshot of the virtual machine may be created while the virtual machine is shut down into an off state. The snapshot is transmitted to a storage environment as a common snapshot. The snapshot and the common snapshot are common snapshots comprising a same representation of the virtual machine. The common snapshot and a prior snapshot of the virtual machine are evaluated to identify a data difference of the virtual machine between the common snapshot and the prior snapshot. An incremental restore is performed of the virtual machine by transmitting the data difference from the storage environment to the computing environment to restore the virtual machine to a state represented by the prior snapshot.