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Backup and Restore a Client

This page explains how to backup and restore a FLNet Client installation.

Your Clients data is stored in

  • docker volumes storing the PostgreSQL databases (Patient, Orchestration and Authentication data)
  • environment variables storing network settings and secrets such as database secrets
  • nginx configuration files storing further network settings

Create Local Database Backups​

Using the provided create-backup.sh script​

A backup script is provided with the deployment in the FLNet_client folder and should be excecuted from this folder.

./create-backup.sh

The client should be running when running the script. If this script outputs Backup completed: ... the backup was successful. It creates a timestamped backup folder and generates SQL dumps for all local databases and backups your whole FLNet_client folder including environment variables and nginx configuration.

The script is commented if you're interested in the details of the backup process, in short it

  • copies the FLNet_client folder to a new backup folder with a timestamp, containing all configuration files and environment variables
  • generates SQL dumps for all local PostgreSQL databases and saves them in the backup folder
  • creates a restore-backup.sh script in the backup folder that can be used to restore the client state from the backup folder.

Restore Local Database Backups​

You can just use the generated restore-backup.sh script in the created backup folder:

cd backups/
# This folders name depends on when you created the backup
cd backup_2026-06-19_14-45-42/
./restore-backup.sh

To now start your restored deployment, you can use the docker compose commands as usual, for example:

docker compose up -d

The restore script restores the local PostgreSQL databases by importing the generated SQL dumps with psql through docker compose exec. If you accidentally already ran docker compose up before running the restore, the database will already contain constraints and you will get multiple errors. Please then run:

docker compose down -v
./restore-backup.sh

This will delete the existing volumes and their data before restoring the backup!

What exactly is backed up?​

Databases​

The local databases are all PostgreSQL databases:

  • local-learning-api-db: stores the patient data and import related settings such as connectors
  • orch-api-db: stores orchestration data from the tool execution system
  • keycloak-postgres: stores Keycloak users, realms, clients and authentication state

The backup script uses pg_dump through docker compose exec. This creates portable .sql files that can later be imported into PostgreSQL again with psql.

Settings files​

  • The nginx config is backed up including also the domain name which is hardcoded nginx.conf. This hardcoding allows us to use the more secure chainguard nginx image which does not allow to change the domain name through environment variables.
  • The .env file containing domain name, used port as well as the global platform used in the deployment.
  • the env folder contains any secrets such as the database passwords.

Important Notes​

  • The commands use docker compose exec -T so they also work in non-interactive shells, for example in cron jobs.
  • The generated SQL files may contain sensitive information, especially the Keycloak backup. Store them securely.
  • This backup process does NOT cover versioning. We recommend that you change the docker-compose.yml file to use a specific version tag for the PostgreSQL images instead of latest to ensure compatibility when restoring the backup in the future.