Export & backup

Export & backup gets your documentation out of NetSimLab, as backups, spreadsheets or Markdown, and puts it back when you need to.

Download a backup

In Full backup, click Download backup (.zip). The archive contains:

• netsimlab.json: the complete database, which you can restore.
• csv/: one spreadsheet per table (hosts, storage pools, networks, VMs / containers, images, projects, devices, VLANs, IP assignments, links) that opens in Excel or Google Sheets.
• configs/<project>/<device>.txt: every saved device configuration.

API keys, tokens, passwords and user accounts are never included.

You can also download just the database (JSON only), a single table from Spreadsheets (CSV), or all your documentation as one Markdown file from Documentation (Markdown) (Download Markdown or Copy to clipboard).

Automate off-box backups

On the NetSimLab server, a scheduled job (e.g. cron) can save a backup every night:

curl -fsS -o "netsimlab-$(date +%F).zip" http://localhost:8080/api/backup.zip

If sign-in is turned on, the request needs a signed-in session. Copy the file somewhere other than the NetSimLab server.

Use snapshots to undo changes

NetSimLab takes automatic snapshots of your data:

• when the server starts, then every 24 hours if anything changed;
• before every restore or import;
• before every Proxmox sync and before removing labs deleted in GNS3.

The newest 14 are kept. Click Snapshot now to take one yourself before a big change. In the snapshot list you can Download any snapshot, and an admin can Restore it, which puts your data back exactly as it was at that moment. Your data is snapshotted again first, so a restore can itself be undone.

Restore

Restoring replaces all current data. It needs the admin role.

1. In Restore, click Choose backup file… and pick a backup .zip or a .json export (backups from NetSimDoc, the earlier name, work too).
2. Confirm. A snapshot of the current data is taken first.

Caution

Restoring a backup or snapshot doesn’t bring back GNS3 API keys or Proxmox token secrets; those are never in backups. If they were lost, enter them again on the server’s or host’s page.

Where the data lives

On the NetSimLab server, the live data is data/netsimlab.json and snapshots are in data/backups/. Both can be moved with settings (DATA_FILE, BACKUP_DIR), and how many snapshots are kept and how often with BACKUP_KEEP and BACKUP_INTERVAL_HOURS.