Backup

Back up a deployment’s database and uploaded files, and bring the archive off the server.

An archive holds everything PocketBase keeps in its data directory: data.db, auxiliary.db, and the storage/ tree that every uploaded file lives in. It is taken while the app keeps serving — the databases are copied with VACUUM INTO, so nothing is caught half-written.

Syntax

$ vela backup <command>

• create - Take a backup and download it
• list - List the backups on a target
• download - Save an existing backup off the server
• delete - Remove a backup
• schedule - Back up automatically

Where uploads live

Uploaded files are PocketBase’s, not the app’s. On a server they sit in the instance’s shared directory:

/var/lib/vela/apps/<instance>/shared/pb_data/storage/<collection>/<record>/<file>

shared/ is a sibling of releases/, not part of one, so uploads survive a deploy, a rollback, and a vela destroy deployment without --purge. Nothing in a release ever overwrites them, and a developer’s local data/ is never uploaded.

Locally the same tree is data/storage/, which is gitignored.

Targets

vela backup defaults to -t production — the copy worth protecting. Name another target, or local, to work somewhere else:

$ vela backup create                 # production
$ vela backup create -t staging
$ vela backup list -t local          # the development database

With S3 storage

If vela enable s3 is on, PocketBase leaves storage/ out of the archive: the files are not on the server to copy. The archive still holds the databases, and the bucket’s own versioning is what protects the uploads. vela backup create says so when it applies.

vela enable s3 --backups is a separate setting, and sends the archives themselves to a bucket rather than leaving them on the disk they are a backup of.