Move your Discourse Instance to a Different Server

[Discourse]

This is a guide for moving your Discourse instance from one server to another, including all settings and data. This guide applies to self-hosted Discourse instances using Docker.

Required user level: System Administrator

This procedure involves domain and DNS changes. Ensure you have access to both the source and destination servers.

This guide walks you through the process of migrating your Discourse instance from one server to another, ensuring your data, settings, and configuration are preserved.

Disclaimer added by @pfaffman 2025-09-12T05:00:00Z.

These instructions don’t work well now because you’re now using https and let’s encrypt, which require the new server to have DNS pointed to it so that it can request keys. What I recommend is follow the Move a Discourse site to another VPS with rsync (perhaps using --exclude postgres* and then backing up and restoring the database from the command line.) This is slick since if you know how, you can tweak your local DNS to point to the new server so you can test that it works while the rest of the internet still sees the old site.

Summary

You will perform the following key steps in this guide:

1. Back up your current Discourse instance (source server).
2. Transfer the backup file to your target Discourse instance (destination server).
3. Restore the backup on the destination server.
4. Update DNS settings (if applicable).

Adjusting DNS settings (when required)

If you’re using the same domain for the new server, reduce the TTL (time to live) on your DNS entry in advance. This ensures minimal downtime during propagation of the updated DNS records. If you’ll use a new domain, this step can be skipped.

Logging in and preparing the source server

1. Log in to your source Discourse instance with an account that has administrator permissions.
2. Ensure both the source and destination servers are using:
   • The same Discourse version.
   • The same set of plugins.
3. Upgrade the Discourse version on both servers by visiting /admin/upgrade.

Avoid restoring a newer backup onto an older Discourse version, or incompatible PostgreSQL versions, as this may result in errors.

Creating and downloading the backup

1. Navigate to /admin/backups on your source Discourse instance.
2. Click the Backup button to create a backup:
   
   
3. When prompted, confirm by clicking Yes.
4. Once the backup is complete, return to the Backups tab, and locate the newly created backup.
5. Click Download to save the file locally:
   
   

Before proceeding, review your app.yml file to ensure any optional settings, such as CDN configurations, installed plugins, or HTTPS support, are consistent between the source and destination servers.

Restoring the backup on the destination server

To restore the backup via the command line, refer to the relevant documentation.

1. Sign in as an administrator to your destination Discourse instance.
2. Navigate to /admin/site_settings, and search for restore. Enable the allow restore setting.
3. Go to /admin/backups and upload the backup file you downloaded earlier by clicking the Upload button:
   
   
4. After the upload completes, click the Restore button for the uploaded backup:
   
   
5. Confirm by clicking Yes when prompted.

The restoration process will begin. This may take some time depending on your database size. After the process completes, you’ll be logged out automatically.

Finishing up and logging in

1. Log into your destination Discourse instance with your admin credentials.
2. If the site was backed up using HTTPS, ensure HTTPS is enabled on the new server. If not properly configured, use the Rails console to disable the “force https” setting temporarily.
3. Re-enable any optional configurations by editing the app.yml file and rebuilding your instance. This may include:
   • Enabling CDN support.
   • Installing additional plugins.
   • Setting HTTPS configurations.

Common issues and solutions

Backup file is not restoring

• Check that the Discourse and PostgreSQL versions match between the source and destination servers.

Unable to log in after restoration (with HTTPS enabled)

• Use the Rails console to disable force https temporarily by running:

  SiteSetting.force_https = false
  

Last edited by @pfaffman 2025-09-12T22:10:57Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[bayardo.rivas]

Is this guide still valid 11 years later?

I am running my Discourse on Ubuntu and I want to upgrade the OS from 20.04 LTS → 24.04 LTS with the less downtime. It’s in AWS.

[merefield (Robert)]

@bayardo.rivas

still valid 11 years later?

That’s a little pessimistic

@Discourse

Last edited by @SaraDev 2024-11-21T00:47:52Z

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Or is it… realistic? I.e. Because of this kind of things:

@Discourse

Check that the Discourse and PostgreSQL versions match between the source and destination servers.

[bayardo.rivas]

I think is valid to be concern and ask if this is like the documentation. I recently upgraded my Discourse forum and I got some issues that broke the system, I was just upgrading from one version to the lattest. Something about new plugins that now are in the core system of Discourse.

I think that moving to a different instance with a newer OS is a major change. If I’m going to try this approach, I would like to have all the feedback as possible.

I appreciate any usefull comments. Thanks.

[merefield (Robert)]

This guide is kind of outside the scope of that specific change.

Core upgrades are in general steps you need to take with an open mind as there are often deprecations and changes.

But that’s different to migration and this guide is not 11 years old

[bayardo.rivas]

thanks for your comments.

[Gunnar (Gunnar Helliesen)]

If you’re on Ubuntu 20.04 still, are you using Docker and aufs?

if you are, you should read this before proceeding:

Docker Upgrade Removed AUFS Storage Driver, Killed Discourse

I run a Discourse forum installation on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS. The Docker image uses AUFS for storage. Today, I installed upgrades via sudo apt upgrade. Now the Discourse forum is no longer accessible, and it appears to be because a Docker upgrade removed the AUFS storage driver. I see plenty of guides to configuring Docker to use Overlay2 instead, but I don’t see any guidance on how to migrate my existing Discourse installation to use Overlay2, especially now that I can’t start Docker to mount m…

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I believe so, though I didn’t look extra closely. No. The new site will fail to get keys from let’s encrypt if DNS doesn’t point to it. So you’d need to backup, transfer the backup, switch DNS to the new server and then rebuild.

If you want to minimize downtime, what I recommend is Move a Discourse site to another VPS with rsync. This copies over your ssl keys so the new server is ready to go when you do the rebuild.

Unless you’ve upgraded to Postgres 15 already (and maybe even then), what I’d recommend (what I do) is --exclude postgres*, rebuild, and then backup the main site and restore that backup on the new server. When that’s restored, switch the DNS. The rsync directions have you shutdown the datbase so you can copy the raw database files. There are some cases where this won’t work very well, so mostly I make a database-only backup and restore it.

EDIT: I added this to the OP.

@Discourse

Disclaimer added by @pfaffman 2025-09-12T05:00:00Z.

These instructions don’t work well now because you’re now using https and let’s encrypt, which require the new server to have DNS pointed to it so that it can request keys. What I recommend is follow the Move a Discourse site to another VPS with rsync (perhaps using --exclude postgres* and then backing up and restoring the database from the command line.) This is slick since if you know how, you can tweak your local DNS to point to the new server so you can test that it works while the rest of the internet still sees the old site.