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PERCONA MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT DOCUMENTATION

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Run Docker with the host directory

Not recommended for production environments

Using a host directory for PMM data persistence is not recommended for production environments. This approach may lead to permission issues, inconsistent backup behavior, and potential data corruption during upgrades.

For production deployments, we strongly recommend using Docker volumes instead, which provide better isolation, portability, and compatibility with Docker’s ecosystem.

When to use host directories

Host directory mounting can be useful in specific scenarios:

  • development and testing environments
  • when you need direct filesystem access to PMM data
  • integration with existing host-based backup solutions
  • migration from other deployment methods

Installation steps

To deploy PMM Server using a host directory:

  1. Pull the latest PMM Server image: 

    docker pull percona/pmm-server:3

  2. Create and identify a directory on the host where to store PMM data. For example, /home/user/srv.

  3. Run the PMM Server with the host image mounted, making sure to replace your_watchtower_token with the token created during Watchtower setup: 

    docker run --detach --restart always \
--publish 443:8443 \
--env PMM_WATCHTOWER_HOST=your_watchtower_host \
--env PMM_WATCHTOWER_TOKEN=your_watchtower_token \
--volume /home/user/srv:/srv \
--network=pmm-network \
--name pmm-server \
percona/pmm-server:3

  4. Set a secure password for the default admin user, replacing your_secure_password with a strong, unique password:

    docker exec -t pmm-server change-admin-password your_secure_password

  5. Access the PMM web interface at https://localhost:443 in a web browser. If you’re connecting from a different machine, replace localhost with your server’s IP address or hostname.

Migrate from data container to host directory

To migrate data from a Docker volume to a host directory:

docker cp <container-id>:/srv /target/host/directory

Migrate from host directory to Docker volume

To migrate from a host directory to a Docker volume (recommended for production):

  1. Create a new Docker volume: 
    docker volume create pmm-data

  2. Copy data from host directory to the volume: 

      docker run --rm -v /path/on/host:/source -v pmm-data:/target alpine cp -a /source/. /target/

  3. Update your container to use the volume instead of the host directory.

Next steps