Backup & Restore

Zizq stores its data in its root directory, which by default is in ./zizq-root relative to the current working directory, but can be specified via --root-dir or ZIZQ_ROOT_DIR. In order to enable taking backups of this directory, Zizq provides zizq backup and zizq restore commands.

Online Backups

When the server is running, the only safe way to take a backup is by using zizq backup which safely takes a point-in-time snapshot of the running server as a gzipped tarball archive. This process does not block the running server.

When zizq backup runs, it connects to the Admin API on the Zizq server and requests a backup. This backup is downloaded by the zizq backup command for safe storage at your control.

By default, zizq backup will connect to http://127.0.0.1:8901. If you have configured the Admin API on the Zizq server to use a different host or port, or to use HTTP or Mutual TLS, you will need to specify a --url explicitly.

zizq backup --url https://zizq.internal:8901 backup.tar.gz

Requesting backup from https://zizq.internal:8901...
Backup saved to backup.tar.gz (42.0 MiB)

Note

If the Admin API is configured to use Mutual TLS, make sure to provide --client-cert and --client-key to zizq backup.

Restore from a Backup

The zizq restore command takes a backup archive and extracts it to create a new root directory with the backup’s contents. This is an entirely offline operation and cannot be performed on a running Zizq server. If the root directory already exists and is non-empty, zizq restore will refuse to overwrite it.

In order to specify which directory to extract the archive into, make sure to pass --root-dir (or set ZIZQ_ROOT_DIR).

zizq restore --root-dir ./new-zizq-root backup.tar.gz

Restoring from backup.tar.gz to new-zizq-root...
Restore complete.

The server can now be started using the restored root directory.

Offline Backups

Warning

It is not safe to copy the root directory while the server is running. The result is likely to be corrupt. Use zizq backup instead.

If the server is not running, it is sufficient to take an archive of the entire root directory.

tar cvzf backup.tar.gz zizq-root