How to copy docker containers to a new host, including stored data?

Question

I have done some developing with docker containers for InfluxDB, Chronograf and Grafana (using this docker-compose setup) on my local machine::

version: "3"

services:

    influxdb:
        image: influxdb:1.5
        volumes:
            - influxdb_data:/var/lib/influxdb
        ports:
            - 127.0.0.1:8086:8086
        restart: always
    chronograf:
        image: chronograf:1.5
        volumes:
            - chronograf_data:/var/lib/chronograf
        ports:
            - 127.0.0.1:8087:8888
        restart: always
    grafana:
        image: grafana/grafana
        ports:
            - 127.0.0.1:3000:3000
        volumes:
            - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana
        restart: always

volumes:
    influxdb_data:
    chronograf_data:
    grafana_data:

I want to copy these containers to a cloud based VM, including data that is stored in InfluxDB, and dashboards created in Grafana.

What is the preferred way to do this?

Things I have tried:

• Save and Load: this only includes the docker images, so no data is loaded on the new host.
• Export and Import: somehow when I try to import a docker container, it shows no error, but I can't start the container as it doesn't show up in my list of containers, nor my list of images.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65853463/how-to-copy-docker-containers-to-a-new-host-including-stored-data

Answer 1

Whenever I need to move containers here's all I do; I just backup any named volumes I need, and then restore them to the new host (I manually create the new named volume on the host first and import to it there).

Aside from that there's not much more to containers; the rest gets fetched when you re-deploy your compose file (or do docker run).

# Backup
docker run --rm -v volume_name:/volume -v c:migrate:/backup alpine tar -cjf /backup/backup.tar.bz2 -C /volume ./

# Restore
docker run --rm -v volume_name:/volume -v c:migrate:/backup alpine tar -C /volume/ -xjf /backup/backup.tar.bz2

In my compose file I set those volumes as external so docker knows not to try to create them, and use the existing one(s):

i.e. if I created a named volume "my_bitwarden_data" then I'd use:

volumes:
  my_bitwarden_data:
    external: true