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Manage Backups

This guide covers the four main backup operations: creating a manual backup, generating a downloadable dump from a deployment, downloading an existing backup, and restoring a backup to a branch.

note

Creating, restoring, importing, and deleting backups require the Admin role on the project. Any project member can download an existing backup.

:::info Backups need a backup target Backups are stored in the backup target configured for your project (for example a filesystem path on the agent host, or an object-storage bucket). If no backup target is set, scheduled backups do not run and downloads fail with a "no backup target" error.

Set the backup target under Project → Settings → Backup. :::

Automatic backups​

When a project has a backup target configured, Skysize automatically backs up every production branch.

  • Backups run for production branches only, staging and development branches are not backed up automatically.
  • A new backup is taken at most once every 24 hours per branch, and only while the branch is running.
  • The branch must have a successful, active deployment; stopped or dropped branches are skipped.

Retention​

Automatic backups follow a father-son retention policy:

  • Every backup from the last 7 days is kept (the daily tier).
  • One backup per week (a "weekly anchor") is kept for up to 3 months.
  • On the free tier, only the last 7 days are kept, the weekly tier is skipped.

For a production branch backed up daily, this retains roughly 7 daily plus ~12 weekly backups.

Manual backups and imported backups are kept for 90 days and are not subject to the daily/weekly pruning above.

Create a manual backup​

You can trigger a backup at any time, for example, before a major deployment or a data migration.

  1. Open your project and go to the Deployments tab.
  2. Find the deployment you want to back up and click Create Backup.
  3. In the Create Manual Backup modal, optionally fill in Note (optional) to label the backup (for example before migration).
  4. Click Create Backup.

The backup is queued and appears in the Backups tab once it finishes. Manual backups are stored in the same backup target as automatic ones.

note

A manual backup also requires a configured backup target. If none is set, the backup job will fail.

Generate a downloadable dump from a deployment​

You can generate a one-off dump directly from a running deployment. This is useful for local development, quick exports, or moving data to another host.

  1. Open your project and go to the Deployments tab.
  2. Find the deployment you want to dump and click Download Backup.
  3. In the Download a dump modal, choose your options:
    • Type: pick Neutralized database dump for testing/troubleshooting (disables outgoing mail, scheduled actions, and other live integrations so the dump is safe to run in a non-production environment) or Exact database dump (an unmodified copy).
    • Filestore: pick With Filestore (includes attachments and images) or Without Filestore (a smaller, database-only dump).
  4. Click Create Dump.

The dump is queued and you are notified when it is ready. It appears in the Backups tab, where you can download it.

Download an existing backup​

  1. Open your project and go to the Backups tab.
  2. Find the backup you want in the list.
  3. Click Request download. Skysize prepares the archive, then the action becomes Download backup.

The backup is provided as a .zip archive (an Odoo dump containing the SQL database and, unless excluded, the filestore).

note

Downloading reads from the project's backup target. If the project has no backup target configured, the download cannot be served.

Restore a backup​

You can restore any backup to any branch in your project, not only the branch it was taken from. A common use case is restoring a production backup into staging to get realistic test data.

  1. Open your project and go to the Backups tab.
  2. Find the backup you want to restore.
  3. Click Restore.
  4. In the Restore backup modal, select the Restore to branch target.
  5. Confirm.

During a restore the target container is stopped, its database is replaced, and the container is restarted with the restored data.

caution

Restoring replaces the entire database of the target branch. Any data currently in that branch is lost. If you need to keep it, create a manual backup of the target branch first.

caution

Restoring into a production branch overwrites the live production database and cannot be undone. The restore modal shows an explicit warning in this case.

Delete a backup​

  1. Open your project and go to the Backups tab.
  2. Find the backup.
  3. Click Delete and confirm.

Deleting removes both the backup record and its stored file from the backup target.