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All data of an on-premise installation resides in the installation directory, the directory containing docker-compose.yml and .env. Docker images do not need to be backed up; they are downloaded again during installation.

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What must be backed up

The directories Postgres and Redis do not need to be backed up. The running database in Postgres is only consistent when stopped; back up PostgresBackups instead.
The database and Data/Data/Persistent belong together. The database references files in this directory, and the key stored there is required to decrypt stored content. Always back up both together and close in time.

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Disaster recovery

For recovery after an outage, we recommend daily snapshots of the entire virtual machine on your virtualization platform. A snapshot captures the database, files, and configuration in one consistent state and can be restored within minutes. Keep the snapshots on a different storage system than the running machine. Also take a snapshot before every update of VARIOS AI so that you can return to the previous state if problems occur. The database backup described in the next section complements the snapshots: it allows you to restore individual days or to move an installation to another system.

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Database backup

VARIOS AI creates a full database backup every day at 3:00 a.m. in the PostgresBackups directory and keeps the backups of the last seven days. The time is set by BACKUP_TIME on the postgres-backup service in docker-compose.yml. To start a backup manually:
Copy the installation directory without Postgres and Redis to another system after each database backup, for example with rsync or your backup software.

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Restore

1

Install VARIOS AI

Install VARIOS AI on the target system in the same version as at the time of the backup. The version is stored in the backed-up .env under VERSION. Do not start the services yet.
2

Restore files

Copy .env, docker-compose.yml, traefik, Data/Data/Persistent, and Web/_Resources from the backup into the installation directory. The Postgres directory must be empty or absent.
3

Restore the database

Start only the database and import the desired backup:
Replace <database-user> with the value of POSTGRES_USER from your .env. Two messages stating that the role and the database already exist are expected and can be ignored.
4

Start all services and verify

Log in, open an older chat with an uploaded file, and check that the file is displayed.
Test the restore regularly on a separate system. Only a successfully restored backup is a backup.