/
Backup & Restore

Backup & Restore

This project provides out-of-the-box backup and restore functionality for your OpenMRS deployment, powered by the robust Restic tool. This enables you to back up and restore your application data using a wide variety of storage backends supported by Restic, such as local disk, S3, Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and more.

🔄 How It Works

  • Backup and restore are managed by dedicated Docker Compose services using the mekomsolutions/restic-compose-backup and mekomsolutions/restic-compose-backup-restore images.

  • The backup service periodically snapshots your data volumes and database, storing them in your configured Restic repository.

  • The restore service can be used to recover your data from a specific snapshot.

Configuration

🔧 Environment Variables

You can configure backup and restore behavior using the following environment variables in your .env file or directly in your Compose files:

Variable

Description

Variable

Description

RESTIC_REPOSITORY

The Restic repository URL (e.g., local path, s3, etc.)

RESTIC_PASSWORD

Password for the Restic repository

RESTIC_KEEP_DAILY

Number of daily snapshots to keep

RESTIC_KEEP_WEEKLY

Number of weekly snapshots to keep

RESTIC_KEEP_MONTHLY

Number of monthly snapshots to keep

RESTIC_KEEP_YEARLY

Number of yearly snapshots to keep

LOG_LEVEL

Log verbosity (e.g., info, debug)

CRON_SCHEDULE

Cron schedule for automatic backups (e.g., 0 2 * * * for daily at 2am)

RESTIC_RESTORE_SNAPSHOT

(Restore only) The snapshot ID or tag to restore

BACKUP_PATH

Local directory for storing backup repository (default: ./backup

Volumes and Labels

  • The backend and db services are labeled and configured to include their data volumes in the backup.

  • Additional volumes (e.g., for configuration checksums, person images, complex obs) are also included and labeled for backup.

Usage

Restore

To restore from a backup:

  1. Set the BACKUP_PATH, RESTIC_PASSWORD, and RESTIC_RESTORE_SNAPSHOT environment variables.

  2. Start the restore service:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose-restore.yml up -d

This will restore the specified snapshot to the appropriate volumes. The backend and db services are configured to wait for the restore to complete before starting.

IMPORTANT

The restore process will leave a restore container that will block the backup process. To clean up the restore container, run the following command:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose-restore.yml rm restore docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose-restore.yml exec backup restic unlock -v

References