Guides

Persistent volumes

Every deploy starts your app in a fresh container, so anything it wrote to disk is gone. A volume is a directory that stays: a SQLite database, user uploads or a cache survive deploys, rollbacks, restarts and sleep.

Add one from the dashboard

1. 1

   Open the project's Settings

   Under Volumes, choose Add volume.
2. 2

   Name it and pick where it mounts

   For example data at /data. The path is where your app reads and writes, so point your database file or upload folder inside it.
3. 3

   Redeploy

   The volume is mounted from the next deploy on. Its size shows next to it once it's in use.

Or in skiff.toml

Apps deployed with skiff deploy list their volumes in skiff.toml, up to five per app:

[[volumes]]
name = "data"
path = "/data"

[[volumes]]
name = "uploads"
path = "/app/public/uploads"

Where they're mounted

• Every replica mounts the same volume, including ones added by autoscaling. Several replicas writing the same SQLite file at once can lock each other out, so keep a SQLite app at one replica.
• Workers, jobs and the release command see the same files, so a migration in the release command runs against the live database.
• Previewsmount the same paths on empty volumes of their own. A preview never reads or changes production's files, and its volumes are deleted with it.

Deleting

Deleting a volume from the dashboard removes its files on the next deploy, once no container uses it. Deleting a project deletes its volumes too. skiff down keeps them, so redeploying the same app picks its files back up.