Backup and Restore

Backup

Pharlux supports live backup — the WAL and Parquet files are safe to copy while the server is running.

Quick backup

pharlux backup --output /backups/pharlux-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar

This creates a tar archive of the data directory. The backup includes:

• WAL segments (wal/)
• Parquet files (metrics/, logs/)
• Auth database (auth.db)
• Alert rules database (alerts.db)

Scheduled backup (cron)

# /etc/cron.d/pharlux-backup
0 2 * * * root /usr/local/bin/pharlux backup --output /backups/pharlux-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).tar --config /etc/pharlux/pharlux.toml

Remote backup

Combine with standard tools:

pharlux backup --output - | ssh backup-server 'cat > /backups/pharlux-latest.tar'

Restore

1. Stop Pharlux:

   sudo systemctl stop pharlux

2. Extract the backup into the data directory:

   sudo rm -rf /var/lib/pharlux/*
   sudo tar xf /backups/pharlux-20260413.tar -C /var/lib/pharlux/ --strip-components=1

3. Start Pharlux:

   sudo systemctl start pharlux

Pharlux will automatically replay any WAL segments and recover compaction state on startup.

Upgrade procedure

1. Stop Pharlux:

   sudo systemctl stop pharlux

2. Take a backup (recommended):

   pharlux backup --output /backups/pharlux-pre-upgrade.tar

3. Check schema compatibility:

   pharlux migrate --config /etc/pharlux/pharlux.toml

4. Replace the binary:

   curl -L https://github.com/Veltara-Works/pharlux/releases/latest/download/pharlux-linux-amd64 \
     -o /usr/local/bin/pharlux
   chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pharlux

5. Start Pharlux:

   sudo systemctl start pharlux

The upstream OTel Collector's built-in retry/buffering handles the brief ingest gap during the restart.

Data retention

Pharlux automatically deletes Parquet partitions older than retention_days (default 30 days). To change:

[storage]
retention_days = 14

Manual compaction reduces the number of small Parquet files:

pharlux compact --config /etc/pharlux/pharlux.toml