Backup and Restore Data
The most important part of running any Rails application is making sure your data is backed up and safe, and if the unspeakable happens, it's straightforward to restore data and get back up and running.
Postgres databases on Fly.io are treated as Fly Apps, which you can read more about in the docs. What that means is backing up data is an exercise in taking snapshots of the Postgres app's volumes, then restoring the snapshots to a new database server, verifying the restoration, and connecting the application to the restored database.
Get the Name of the Database App Instance
If you set up your Rails application from fly launch
, the name of your database is <app-name>-db
. To figure that out for sure run the following from the root of the Rails project:
fly info
App
Name = my-rails-app
Owner = personal
Version = 40
Status = running
Hostname = my-rails-app.fly.dev
The Name
key is the name of your Rails app. In this case, the database app would be my-rails-app-db
. Let's see if that instance exists by appending the -a
flag with the name of the database application:
fly info -a my-rails-app-db
App
Name = my-rails-app-db
Owner = personal
Version = 40
Status = running
Hostname = my-rails-app-db.fly.dev
If that doesn't work, then try to find the database instance by running:
fly postgres list
NAME OWNER STATUS LATEST DEPLOY
my-rails-app-db personal running 37m11s ago
and look for the database instance under the NAME
column on the list.
Daily Backup Snapshots
Fly.io creates a snapshot of the database volumes once per day and retains them for 7 days. To view the snapshots for the database run:
fly volumes list -a my-rails-app-db
ID STATE NAME SIZE REGION ZONE ATTACHED VM CREATED AT
vol_18l524ywo6pr7ztz created pg_data 10GB ord 9899 4d0f9e75 1 week ago
vol_okgj5456mqxry2wz created pg_data 10GB ord d6bf 015ff37c 1 week ago
The number of volumes will vary depending on how many database replicas you elected while provisioning the database. One primary database and one replica will yield 2 volumes.
Now, let's see how many snapshots exist for a database volume:
fly volumes snapshots list vol_18l524ywo6pr7ztz
Snapshots
ID SIZE CREATED AT
vs_nRabzvyYJoRgqfMjM8 84202094 56 minutes ago
vs_wkptzNyLBQklDC6eGLv 84367861 1 day ago
vs_L4MbJeny9Q4Ogt97b1y 84238497 2 days ago
vs_bebpAmaz9we0Mug7eP 83702010 3 days ago
The values under the ID
columns are what will be used to restore a snapshot.
Restoring Daily Snapshot
To restore a Postgres application from a snapshot, simply specify the --snapshot-id
argument when running the create
command as shown below:
fly postgres create --snapshot-id <snapshot-id>
? App Name: my-rails-app-db-restored
Automatically selected personal organization: Brad Gessler
? Select region: [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
? Select region: sjc (San Jose, California (US))
? Specify the initial cluster size: 2
? Select VM size: shared-cpu-1x - 256
Creating postgres cluster my-rails-app-db-restored in organization personal
Postgres cluster my-rails-app-db-restored created
Username: postgres
Password: <redacted>
Hostname: my-rails-app-db-restored.internal
Proxy Port: 5432
PG Port: 5433
Save your credentials in a secure place, you won't be able to see them again!
This provisions and launches a new Fly Postgres database server with the snapshot you specified.
Connect the Restored Database
Detach the Rails application from the current Postgres cluster:
fly postgres detach my-rails-app-db
Then attach it to the new cluster:
fly postgres attach my-rails-app-db-restored
Now your application is pointing at the restored database.