Import data from another postgres cluster

Import data from another postgres cluster into your Managed Postgres Cluster

If you’re migrating to Fly Managed Postgres (MPG) from an unmanaged Fly Postgres cluster or another Postgres provider, you’ll need to import your data into your MPG cluster.

There isn’t currently an automated way to migrate an existing DB’s data, but you can accomplish this with a standard Postgres dump and restore process after creating your MPG cluster.

For simple databases, this can be as easy as running :

 pg_dump "$LEGACY_PG_CONNECTION_STRING" | psql "$MPG_URI".

Because your MPG cluster runs within your Fly Private Network, you’ll need to be connected to your organizations Wireguard network in order to restore into your MPG database. To run the import process from your local machine, you would take the following steps:

1. Create your Managed Postgres cluster from the Fly.io dashboard, or using fly mpg create

1. Open a proxy connection to your MPG database with

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   $ fly mpg proxy    
   ? Select Organization: My Organization (personal)
   ? Select a Postgres cluster my-test-cluster (iad)
   Proxying localhost:16380 to remote [fdaa:1:2345:0:0::67]:5432
   

2. Find your MPG cluster’s connection string in the dashboard, and modify it to use the local proxy:

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   Connection String: postgres://fly-user:<password>@localhost:16380/fly-db
   

3. Run the dump and restore command

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   pg_dump "$LEGACY_PG_CONNECTION_STRING" | psql postgres://fly-user:<password>@localhost:16380/fly-db
   

4. If everything succeeds, all data from your legacy cluster will be imported into your new MPG cluster.

For larger or more complex databases, you may need to break the dump and restore process into multiple steps. You may also consider using dedicated PG migration tools like pgloader or pgcopydb.

Limitations

Some source databases may not be a good fit for importing into a Fly Managed Postgres cluster. Some common cases that will prevent imports are if your source database:

• Uses multiple schemas or contains multiple databases within it
• Relies on a third party extension that isn’t supported by MPG
• Is larger than 500 GB

Currently support for the features mentioned above are in development and Fly Managed Postgres may not be a good fit if your app relies on them.