# Moving discourse instance to a new server

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-discourse-instance-to-a-new-server/378200
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [August 11, 2025, 6:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-discourse-instance-to-a-new-server/378200 "2025-08-11T18:53:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Headless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/headless/32/183495_2.png) [@Headless](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Headless)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2025, 6:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-discourse-instance-to-a-new-server/378200/1 "2025-08-11T18:53:01Z")

</div>

> Before asking, did you search first? Press 🔍 at the upper right to search

Hello,

I first want to thank you for any support you may offer. With that being said, I would like to discuss my issue and then my goals for my self-hosted Discourse instance.

# Problem

I currently use Hetzner as my server that is hosting a discourse instance. I have attached volumes for `Uploads` , `Backups`. The current Docker containers and images, as well as the app.yml and etc, are hosted on the server itself under `/var/discourse`.

I have had this server over the course of 3-4+ years, and throughout that time, I have always run into the issue with space on the server itself (not volumes). Anytime I wanted to rebuild the app or relaunch the app, I would run into space issues as it would install the images and Docker containers to the local server rather than a volume. I would constantly need to remove Docker and any images/containers and do a fresh reinstall so I can rebuild. I also believe the SQL data is attached to the local server instead of a volume.

# Goals

I am not sure what would be best for me going forward. Is it moving specific folders or files to a new volume for the Postgres DB and Docker images, and if so, I would love support on how to do that? Or starting from scratch with a fresh server, creating a backup of the server, and restoring on a new server with all volumes in properly configured locations?

* * *

With all this being said, I would love some support on configuring the app.yml to properly have volumes for everything that takes up space, so I can individually scale when backups, uploads, db, or docker images, for example, need it.

I can provide my app.yml file later today, as I am currently at work and looking to get ahead of the game.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-discourse-instance-to-a-new-server/378200)._