Backup & Restore

Vulcan's backup and restore system lets you create full-fidelity archives of projects and restore them — on the same instance or a different one. Backups preserve all component data, rules, reviews, satisfaction relationships, and optionally project memberships.

Backup Format

Backups use JSON Archive format — a ZIP file containing:

project-name-backup.zip
├── manifest.json              # Archive metadata + component list
├── project.json               # Project name, description, visibility
├── component-name/
│   ├── component.json         # Component fields (name, prefix, version, etc.)
│   ├── rules.json             # All rules with full field data
│   ├── satisfactions.json     # Rule satisfaction relationships
│   └── reviews.json           # Review history (optional)
└── component-name-2/
    └── ...

Every field is preserved exactly as stored in the database. No lossy format conversion.

Creating a Backup

1. Navigate to the Project page
2. Click the Export button
3. Select Backup as the purpose
4. JSON Archive format is auto-selected
5. Optionally check Include project memberships
6. Select which components to include (or all)
7. Click Export

The browser downloads a .zip file.

Include Memberships

When checked, backup includes a memberships.json file listing each member's email and role. On restore, existing users are matched by email and granted the same roles. Users not found on the target instance are skipped.

Restoring Into an Existing Project

Use this to add components from a backup into a project that already exists.

1. Navigate to the Project page
2. Click New Component
3. Select Restore From Backup
4. Upload the ZIP file
5. Choose whether to include reviews and memberships
6. Click Preview to see what will be imported

Component Selection

The preview step shows each component from the archive with its rule count:

Component	Rules	Status
Photon OS 4	203	Ready to import
Windows Server 2025	275	Name conflict — auto-renamed

• No conflict: Checked by default, imports as-is
• Name conflict: Component name already exists in the project. Auto-renamed with "(restored)" suffix. You can edit the name inline before importing.
• Uncheck any component you don't want to import

Click Import to proceed with the selected components.

Creating a New Project from Backup

Use this to clone or migrate a project to a new instance.

1. Navigate to Projects on the main page
2. Click the New Project dropdown arrow
3. Select From Backup
4. Upload the ZIP file
5. Edit the project name, description, and visibility (pre-filled from the archive)
6. Choose whether to include reviews and memberships
7. Click Preview to see the summary
8. Click Create Project

Vulcan creates a new project, imports all components, and redirects you to the new project page.

Name Conflicts

If a project with the same name already exists, the name is pre-filled with a "(restored)" suffix. You can change it to anything before creating.

Export Pre-flight Warnings

When exporting in DISA Vendor Submission or STIG-Ready Publish Draft mode, Vulcan checks each component's rule statuses:

• Components where all rules are "Not Yet Determined" (NYD) get a warning icon in the component list
• If all selected components are NYD-only, a red alert warns that the export will produce empty output
• If some selected components are NYD-only, a yellow alert lists how many will produce empty worksheets

These modes exclude NYD rules from output (DISA does not accept NYD as a valid status), so exporting a component with only NYD rules produces nothing useful.

What Gets Preserved

Data	Backup	Restore
Component fields (name, prefix, version, title, etc.)	Yes	Yes
Rules (all fields including InSpec code)	Yes	Yes
Rule satisfaction relationships	Yes	Yes
Reviews and review history	Optional	Optional
Project memberships	Optional	Optional (matched by email)
SRG association	By SRG ID	Matched to existing SRG on target

SRG Requirement

The target instance must have the same SRGs loaded. If a component references an SRG that doesn't exist on the target, the import will fail with an error identifying the missing SRG.

Use Cases

• Migration: Move projects between Vulcan instances (dev → staging → production)
• Disaster recovery: Restore from a backup after data loss
• Cloning: Create a copy of a project to start a new version
• Sharing: Send a project archive to another team running their own Vulcan instance
• Selective restore: Import only specific components from a multi-component backup