Skip to main content
Deploy

Backup & Restore

A RushDB instance has two stateful stores. Back up both together so they stay consistent:

StoreHoldsDefault location
Neo4jyour graph data (records, relationships, vectors)neo4j-data volume / external Neo4j or Aura
SQL metadatausers, projects, API tokens, settingsPostgres (postgres-data) or the SQLite file
tip

Take both snapshots within the same short window, ideally with writes paused, so a restored Neo4j graph matches the projects/tokens in SQL metadata.

Neo4j​

Bundled / self-managed Neo4j​

Use neo4j-admin database dump. The community edition requires the database to be stopped; with the bundled Compose stack:

# Stop only RushDB so the graph is quiescent (leave Neo4j running for online dump on Enterprise)
docker compose stop rushdb

# Dump the default database to a mounted path
docker compose exec neo4j neo4j-admin database dump neo4j \
  --to-path=/backups
# (mount a host dir to /backups, or docker cp it out)
docker compose cp neo4j:/backups/neo4j.dump ./neo4j-$(date +%F).dump

docker compose start rushdb

Restore into a fresh Neo4j:

docker compose stop rushdb
docker compose cp ./neo4j-YYYY-MM-DD.dump neo4j:/backups/neo4j.dump
docker compose exec neo4j neo4j-admin database load neo4j \
  --from-path=/backups --overwrite-destination=true
docker compose start rushdb

Neo4j Aura​

Use Aura's built-in snapshots (Console → your instance → Snapshots) for scheduled and on-demand backups and point-in-time restore. No action needed on the RushDB side.

SQL metadata​

Postgres​

# Backup
docker compose exec -T postgres pg_dump -U rushdb rushdb > rushdb-meta-$(date +%F).sql

# Restore (into an empty database)
cat rushdb-meta-YYYY-MM-DD.sql | docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U rushdb -d rushdb

RushDB re-applies any pending schema migrations automatically on the next boot, so restoring a slightly older dump against a newer image is safe.

SQLite​

If you run with SQL_DB_TYPE=sqlite, the metadata is a single file at SQL_DB_PATH (default /data/rushdb.db). Back it up while RushDB is stopped:

docker compose stop rushdb
docker compose cp rushdb:/data/rushdb.db ./rushdb-meta-$(date +%F).db
docker compose start rushdb

Volumes (quick full-stack snapshot)​

For the bundled stack you can also snapshot the Docker volumes directly:

docker run --rm -v rushdb_neo4j-data:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/neo4j-data.tgz -C /data .
docker run --rm -v rushdb_postgres-data:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/postgres-data.tgz -C /data .

Replace the volume prefix (rushdb_) with your Compose project name. Restore by extracting the archives back into fresh volumes before starting the stack.

What you do not need to back up​

  • The RushDB container itself — it is stateless; recreate it from the image.
  • The encryption key (RUSHDB_AES_256_ENCRYPTION_KEY) lives in your env, not in a backup. Store it in your secret manager. Without it, restored API tokens and encrypted secrets cannot be decrypted.
  • Automate Neo4j + SQL dumps on the same schedule (daily for active instances).
  • Periodically test a restore into a throwaway stack — an untested backup is not a backup.