# Move from standalone container to separate web and data containers

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413
**Category:** Sysadmins
**Tags:** docker, how-to, advanced-setup, two-container
**Created:** [May 29, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413 "2015-05-29T14:12:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 73

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![mcdanlj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcdanlj/32/131829_2.png) [@mcdanlj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcdanlj)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413/73 "2020-05-30T15:38:34Z")

</div>

As far as I can tell, this guide is lots of words around:

- back up
- create a completely new discourse instance, with more words but the same results as just running `discourse_setup 2container`
- restore

Why wouldn’t you just move or copy `/var/discourse/shared/standalone/{postgres,redis}*` into `/var/discourse/shared/data` after a clean shutdown and before starting up two new containers from separate `containers/*.yml` files? A backup/restore seems like a really heavy-weight way to move all that data across, adding hours unnecessarily to the process. Am I missing something obvious here?

I just tested this process on my test discourse, and split out redis too as long as I was at it, just to make sure I was covering all the bases. Edit: I’ve moved the description to a new topic:

> [@Migrate quickly to separate web and data containers](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-migrate-quickly-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/153355):
>
> warning Warning: If you are not comfortable working as a Linux systems administrator, and do not have experience with docker containers, moving to a multi-container deployment will cause you difficulty, and both staff and volunteer help here will appropriately ask you to return to a standalone single-container deployment fully managed by the launcher script. If you move to a multi-container deployment and your system breaks as a result, you are likely to experience the opportunity to keep b…

The site seems to be functioning fine without a backup/restore cycle. Is there something non-obvious I should be checking for?

I did the same process for [a relatively large discourse](https://forum.makerforums.info) and it’s working fine. I decided that in production I would name my new `web_only` container `app` so that my fingers will keep normally doing the right thing. After I wrote the new container/\*.yml files, the downtime for the entire migration was 12 minutes, far faster than it would have been for a backup/restore cycle.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-from-standalone-container-to-separate-web-and-data-containers/29413)._