Backup and Recovery

Before you deploy PSPDFKit Server in a production environment, you should set up a backup strategy with scheduled automated backups and a tested disaster recovery plan.

PSPDFKit Server uses PostgreSQL as a data store, while binary assets including PDFs are stored in a Docker volume. You need to make backups of both.

PostgreSQL

The easiest way to take a snapshot of your PostgreSQL database is to run pg_dump inside the PSPDFKit container and redirect the dump to a file you can back up using your existing backup infrastructure.

Using the recommended docker-compose.yml configuration, you can dump a snapshot to the pspdfkit_db_dump.sql file:

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docker-compose run --rm pspdfkit pg_dump > pspdfkit_db_dump.sql

You can then restore the dump into a fresh PostgreSQL container:

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docker-compose run --rm pspdfkit pg_isready --timeout=15 # Wait until PostgreSQL has started
docker-compose run --rm pspdfkit psql < pspdfkit_db_dump.sql

Assets

Built-In Storage

When you use the built-in storage option, all assets are backed up with the PostgreSQL backup.

Docker Volume

Be aware that this storage option was deprecated in 2017.7 and will be removed in a future version of PSPDFKit Server.

Using the recommended docker-compose.yml configuration, you can dump a snapshot to the pspdfkit_asset_dump.tar.gz file:

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docker-compose run -T --rm pspdfkit tar -czf - -C /srv/asset_storage . > pspdfkit_asset_dump.tar.gz

You can then restore the dump into a clean asset volume:

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docker-compose run --rm pspdfkit tar -xz -C /srv/asset_storage -f - < pspdfkit_asset_dump.tar.gz

Alternatively, you can use docker volume inspect to find the mount point of the volume, which you can back up using tar or any other technology.

Large Installations

While these approaches are easy to set up and automate via cron or something similar, for larger installations we recommend using a log-shipping backup product, like Barman or WAL-E for PostgreSQL and BorgBackup or duplicity for the asset volume.