Migrating Your Entire Docker Compose Stack to a New Server

1# List all running containers and their compose projects
2docker ps --format "table {{.Names}}	{{.Image}}	{{.Status}}"
3
4# List all volumes and their sizes
5docker system df -v | grep -A 1000 "VOLUME NAME"
6
7# List all networks
8docker network ls
9
10# Export a list of all images (for pre-pulling on new server)
11docker images --format "{{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}" | sort -u > images.txt
12
13# Find all compose files
14find /home -name "docker-compose.yml" -o -name "docker-compose.yaml" 2>/dev/null

1# Backup all compose files and configs
2tar czf compose-configs.tar.gz ~/docker/
3
4# Dump all PostgreSQL databases
5for db in nextcloud gitea; do
6  docker exec ${db}-db pg_dumpall -U postgres | \
7    gzip > ${db}-postgres.sql.gz
8done
9
10# Backup volumes (stop services first for consistency)
11docker compose -f ~/docker/nextcloud/docker-compose.yml stop
12tar czf nextcloud-data.tar.gz \
13  /var/lib/docker/volumes/nextcloud_data/
14docker compose -f ~/docker/nextcloud/docker-compose.yml start

1# Install Docker on new server
2curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
3
4# Copy backups to new server
5rsync -avz backups/ newserver:~/migration/
6
7# Restore compose files
8tar xzf compose-configs.tar.gz -C ~/
9
10# Pre-pull all images (reduces startup time)
11while read image; do docker pull "$image"; done < images.txt
12
13# Create shared networks
14docker network create proxy
15
16# Restore volumes and start services
17# (reverse proxy first, then databases, then apps)
18cd ~/docker/traefik && docker compose up -d
19cd ~/docker/nextcloud && docker compose up -d