Move Uploads and Backups to DigitalOcean Block Storage

Documentation Self-Hosting
1

So you want to move all uploads and backups to DigitalOcean Block Storage?

Before you do this, though, you might instead consider Configure an S3 compatible object storage provider for uploads. It is no more complicated to set up and provides some other advantages.

Setup a Discourse instance on DigitalOcean

Setup a Discourse instance on DigitalOcean using our official guide.

Add a Volume to your droplet

Add a block storage volume to your droplet. Note down the name of the volume. In my case the name of the volume was volume-nyc1-05.

Make sure the volume is formatted and mounted at /mnt/volume_nyc1_05.

Move /var/discourse/shared to the volume

For best performance we will keep postgres_data on our main drive and will move rest of the data to the newly attached volume.

Logged in as root, run these commands from your server:

mv /var/discourse/shared/standalone/postgres_data /var/postgres_data_discourse
mv /var/discourse/shared /mnt/volume_nyc1_05

Make sure to replace volume_nyc1_05 with the name of your volume.

Edit app.yml to reflect the changes

Open the /var/discourse/containers/app.yml file in your preferred editor and look for this block:

## The Docker container is stateless; all data is stored in /shared
volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log

Replace the above block with:

## The Docker container is stateless; all data is stored in /shared
volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /mnt/volume_nyc1_05/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /mnt/volume_nyc1_05/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log
  - volume:
      host: /var/postgres_data_discourse
      guest: /shared/postgres_data

Make sure to replace volume_nyc1_05 with the name of your volume.

Save the app.yml file and rebuild the container.

/var/discourse/launcher rebuild app

:tada: Voila!

That’s it all your uploads and backups are now moved to DigitalOcean Block Storage.

Credits

This guide is inspired from @sam’s suggestion here.

36 Likes
30

I’m trying to follow this approach in Hetzner that have a similar storage but I wonder if that could hurt our general performance.

I read that will offer 1/3 of the SSD speed but I’m talking about notable difference in daily use for uploads and showing files in our Discourse instance because I’m not sure if that 1/3 really impacts or is OK for uploading files.

Of course, the final result depends of our CPU, RAM and what filesystem and block size are using.

Someone wants to share their experience? :slight_smile:

Thanks for the guide!

31

Should you turn off the droplet before doing this? I would normally assume yes but since it’s just shuffling uploads?

32

No. Just create the space and follow the instructions to get it mounted.

34

Thank you for the guidance. After Ive finished all steps and having the forum up again, we constantly witness images that were failed to get loaded. As it has a incorrect path.

Is there any way how I could run a diagnose on that and do some auto fixing?