Replicating Nautobot¶

Replicating the Database¶

Nautobot employs a PostgreSQL database, so general PostgreSQL best practices apply here. The database can be written to a file and restored using the pg_dump and psql utilities, respectively.

Note

The examples below assume that your database is named nautobot.

Export the Database¶

Use the pg_dump utility to export the entire database to a file:

pg_dump nautobot > nautobot.sql

When replicating a production database for development purposes, you may find it convenient to exclude changelog data, which can easily account for the bulk of a database's size. To do this, exclude the extras_objectchange table data from the export. The table will still be included in the output file, but will not be populated with any data.

pg_dump --exclude-table-data=extras_objectchange nautobot > nautobot.sql

Load an Exported Database¶

When restoring a database from a file, it's recommended to delete any existing database first to avoid potential conflicts.

Warning

The following will destroy and replace any existing instance of the database.

psql -c 'drop database nautobot'
psql -c 'create database nautobot'
psql nautobot < nautobot.sql

Keep in mind that PostgreSQL user accounts and permissions are not included with the dump: You will need to create those manually if you want to fully replicate the original database (see the installation docs). When setting up a development instance of Nautobot, it's strongly recommended to use different credentials anyway.

Export the Database Schema¶

If you want to export only the database schema, and not the data itself (e.g. for development reference), do the following:

pg_dump -s nautobot > nautobot_schema.sql

Replicating Uploaded Media¶

By default, Nautobot stores uploaded files (such as image attachments) in its media directory. To fully replicate an instance of Nautobot, you'll need to copy both the database and the media files.

Note

These operations are not necessary if your installation is utilizing a remote storage backend.

Archive the Media Directory¶

Execute the following command (which may need to be changed if you're using non-default storage path settings):

tar -czf nautobot_media.tar.gz $NAUTOBOT_ROOT/media/

Restore the Media Directory¶

To extract the saved archive into a new installation, run the following from the installation root:

tar -xf nautobot_media.tar.gz

Cache Invalidation¶

If you are migrating your instance of Nautobot to a different machine, be sure to first invalidate the cache on the original instance by issuing the invalidate all management command (within the Python virtual environment):

$ nautobot-server invalidate all