Backup & Rollback

How It Works

Before every container update, drydock automatically backs up the current image metadata including the image name, tag, digest, and timestamp. This ensures you always have a record of exactly which image was running prior to each update.

Backups are stored in the LokiJS data store, which is persisted to the /store volume. Each container retains its N most recent backups, with older entries pruned automatically when the limit is exceeded.

Backup Retention

The number of backups retained per container is configurable via a trigger environment variable.

Manual Rollback

Rollback is available in two ways:

• UI -- on the container detail page, select a previous backup and click Rollback.
• API -- send a POST request to /api/backup/:id/rollback, where :id is the container ID.

When a rollback is triggered, drydock will:

1. Pull the backup image
2. Stop the current container
3. Recreate the container using the backup image
4. Start the new container

You can optionally pass a backupId in the request body to target a specific backup. If omitted, the most recent backup is used.

# Roll back to the most recent backup
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/backup/my-container-id/rollback

# Roll back to a specific backup
curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/backup/my-container-id/rollback \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"backupId": "abc123"}'

Auto-Rollback on Health Failure

Containers with a Docker HEALTHCHECK can automatically roll back if they become unhealthy after an update.

Container Labels

How It Works

1. An update completes successfully
2. If dd.rollback.auto=true and the container has a HEALTHCHECK, monitoring starts
3. Health status is polled every dd.rollback.interval for the duration of dd.rollback.window
4. If the status becomes unhealthy, rollback is triggered automatically
5. If the window expires without failure, the container is considered stable

Examples

services:
  myapp:
    image: myapp:latest
    labels:
      - dd.rollback.auto=true
      - dd.rollback.window=600000
      - dd.rollback.interval=5000
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8080/health"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3

docker run \
  --label "dd.rollback.auto=true" \
  --label "dd.rollback.window=600000" \
  --label "dd.rollback.interval=5000" \
  --health-cmd "curl -f http://localhost:8080/health" \
  --health-interval 10s \
  --health-timeout 5s \
  --health-retries 3 \
  myapp:latest