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Moving and exporting projects

Move a whole project to another server, or export it to a file and import it elsewhere.

A project lives on one server, but it is not stuck there. You can move it — applications, databases and volume data — to another server in your fleet, or export it to a file and import it on a different DockBoard instance.

Moving to another server

Available in multi-server mode. On the project page, open the server card, click the move button, pick the target server and confirm.

What DockBoard then does, in order:

  1. 01Tears down the applications and databases on the source server. Failures here do not block the move, and source volumes are kept on the old server.
  2. 02Reassigns the project to the target server.
  3. 03Transfers the Docker volumes asynchronously — exported on the source, imported on the target.
  4. 04Deploys the applications and databases on the target once the data has arrived, so the containers come up on real data rather than empty disks.
  5. 05Regenerates the reverse proxy so the domains follow the project.

What to expect

Take a backup before moving anything you cannot lose. Volume transfer is best-effort: if the export/import setup fails, the migration falls back to deploying immediately with empty volumes, and surfaces a warning. Source volumes stay intact on the old server either way, but recovering from them is manual work.
  • There is downtime. The applications are unavailable while the volumes transfer and the stack redeploys on the new server.
  • Volume discovery follows the platform naming convention. A stack that declares differently-named volumes is not covered when the source is a remote server.
  • The target server must be ONLINE.
  • An application running on a cluster cannot be moved to a single server — its placement *is* the cluster. Change cluster, or move it back to a single host first.

Exporting and importing

Moving is for machines you own in one DockBoard. Export is for crossing that boundary: a project’s definition — applications, their sources and ports, databases, environment variables, domain attachments — written to a file you can import elsewhere.

An export carries the configuration, not the data in your volumes. To carry data across instances, pair it with a backup restored on the far side.

On import, review what the file declares before deploying: the target instance may have different servers, different domains and different quotas.

Moving and exporting projects — DockBoard