Configure automatic backups for Discourse

Documentation Self-Hosting
,
1

So you’d like to automatically back up all your Discourse data every day?

Configuring daily backups

Go to the /admin settings, backup, and set backup_frequency to 1.

image
image851×64 5.02 KB

Now backup will be taken every day.

Store backups on the local server (default)

By default backups are stored on the local server disk.

If you’re self-hosted you can access them at /var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default.

Store backups on S3-compatible storage (using admin panel config)

You can also store backups on S3-compatible storage, such as AWS S3.

You can configure this either in the admin panel settings, or if you’re managing a self-hosted instance, also as environment variables in app.yml. For the latter, see further below.

In order to store backups on Amazon S3, you’ll need to create a unique, private S3 bucket and put it’s name in the s3_backup_bucket site setting.

You can follow most of the steps in Set up file and image uploads to S3 if you need help in setting up a new bucket.

image
image851×66 8.28 KB

:warning: WARNING

Storing backups and regular uploads in the same bucket and folder is no longer supported and will not work.

The s3_backup_bucket path should only be used for backups. If you need to use a bucket that contains other files please make sure that you provide a prefix when you configure the s3_backup_bucket setting (example: my-awesome-bucket/backups) and make sure that files with that prefix are private.

Next, set your S3 credentials under the Files section: s3_access_key_id, s3_secret_access_key, and s3_region.

image
image854×202 15.8 KB

Finally, you need to select “S3” as backup_location.

image
image857×103 6.54 KB

From now on all backups will be uploaded to S3 and not be stored locally anymore. Local storage will only be used for temporary files during backups and restores.

Go to the Backups tab in the admin dashboard to browse the backups – you can download them any time to do a manual offsite backup.

image
image807×287 11.7 KB

Store backups on S3-compatible storage (using environment variables)

You can also configure S3 backups using environment variables in app.yml. For more information, see Configure an S3 compatible object storage provider for uploads

Note that the above article covers app.yml covers S3 setup for backups and for file/image uploads. If you only want to use S3 for backups (and not for uploads of files/images), then you can omit the following parameters from your app.yml config:

  • DISCOURSE_USE_S3
  • DISCOURSE_S3_CDN_URL
  • DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET

You also don’t need to configure the after_assets_precompile step in this case, nor configure a CDN.

Be sure to include all other parameters that are required for your storage provider, as mentioned in the article. Here is one example configuration that only activates S3 for backups (for Scaleway S3):

DISCOURSE_S3_REGION: nl-ams
DISCOURSE_S3_ENDPOINT: https://s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud
DISCOURSE_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID: my_access_key
DISCOURSE_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: my_secret_access_key
DISCOURSE_S3_BACKUP_BUCKET: my_bucket/my_folder
DISCOURSE_BACKUP_LOCATION: s3

Archiving to storage with a lower cost

Note that on AWS S3, you can also enable an automatic move to Glacier bucket lifecycle rule to keep your S3 backup costs low. Other storage providers often have a similar offering.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-27T12:05:42Z

Check documentPerform check on document:
57 Likes