Creating Backup via maintainDB command-line tool

In TeamCity you can back up server data, restore it, and migrate between different databases using the maintainDB.bat|sh utility. For the data backup, TeamCity also provides web UI part, in the Creating Backup from TeamCity Web UI of the TeamCity web UI.

maintainDB utility is located in the <TeamCity Home>/bin directory. It is only available in TeamCity .tar.gz and .exe distributions. To get short reference for all available maintainDB options, run maintainDB from the command line with no parameters.

Backing up Data



TeamCity allows backing up the following data:

• Server settings and configurations, which includes all server settings, properties, and project and build configuration settings

• Database

• Build logs

• Personal changes

• Custom plugins and database drivers installed under TeamCity Data Directory.

Backup of the following data is not supported:

• build artifacts (because of their size). If you need the build artifacts, please also backup content of <TeamCity Data Directory>/system/artifacts directory manually.

• data used by various plugins (NuGet feed, etc.) and audit settings diff data. If you want to preserve it, please also backup content of <TeamCIty Data Directory>/system/pluginData directory manually.

• TeamCity application manual customizations under <TeamCity server home>, including used server port number

• TeamCity application logs (they also reside under <TeamCity server home>.

• Any manually created files under <TeamCity Data Directory> that do not fall into previously mentioned items.

By default, if you run maintainDB utility with no optional parameters, build logs and personal changes will be omitted in the backup.

The default directory for the backup files is the < >\backup.

note

If not specified otherwise with the -A option, TeamCity will read the TeamCity Data Directory path from the TEAMCITY_DATA_PATH environment variable, or the default path ($HOME\.Buildserver) will be used.

Default format of the backup file name is TeamCity_Backup_<timestamp>.zip; the <timestamp> suffix is added in the 'YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS' format.

Performing TeamCity Data Backup with maintainDB Utility



note

Before backing up data, it is recommended to shut down the TeamCity server to include all builds into the backup. If the backup process is started when the TeamCity server is up, running and queued builds are not included into backup.

To create data backup file, from the command line start maintainDB utility with the backup command:

maintainDB.[cmd|sh] backup

To specify type of data to include in the backup file, use the following options:

• -C or --include-config — includes build configurations settings

• -D or --include-database — includes database

• -L or --include-build-logs — includes build logs

• -P or --include-personal-changes — includes personal changes

• -U or --include-supplementary-data — includes supplementary (plugins') data

Specifying different combinations of the above options, you can control the content of the backup file. For example, to create backup with all supported types of data, run

maintainDB backup -C -D -L -P -U

maintainDB Usage Examples for Data Backup



To create backup file with custom name, run maintainDB with -F or --backup-file option and specify desired backup file name without extension:

maintainDB.cmd backup -F <backup file custom name>
or
maintainDB.cmd backup --backup-file <backup file custom name>

The above command will result in creating new zip-file with specified name in the default backup directory.

To add timestamp suffix to the custom filename, add -M or --timestamp option:

maintainDB.cmd backup -F <backup file custom name> -M
or
maintainDB.cmd backup -F <backup file custom name> --timestamp

To create backup file in the custom directory, run maintainDB with -F option:

maintainDB backup -F <absolute path to the custom backup directory>
or
maintainDB backup --data-dir <absolute path to the custom backup directory>