The Stack Harbor PaaS lets you serialise an entire environment — topology, data, configuration — to a JSON manifest and reconstruct it from that manifest later. This is the foundation for:
- Application migration across installations — moving an environment from one Stack Harbor PaaS installation to another, or from a partner installation into your own.
- Snapshot-style backups of full environment definitions — keep an exported manifest as a known-good baseline.
- Templating — use an export as the seed for a related environment in a different region or account.
- Distributing application definitions — share an exported manifest so a colleague can reproduce the environment on their installation.
Export and import sit alongside the in-place operations like cloning and transferring, but cover the case where the source and destination are not on the same installation.
How it works
Export. From the dashboard, export the environment. The platform writes a JSON manifest containing:
- The environment topology — nodes, layers, container types.
- The container data and configuration.
- Per-container settings (variables, custom files, deployment artefacts where relevant).
The manifest is downloadable from the dashboard.
Import. From the same dashboard surface on the destination installation, import the manifest. Three sources are accepted:
- A local file you uploaded.
- A URL that points to a hosted manifest.
- The JPS editor, when you want to inspect or modify the manifest before applying it.
The import recreates the environment on the destination — same topology, same data, same configuration. Region and pricing may differ on the destination installation, so you may want to size the environment to match before triggering the import.
What this section covers
This section indexes the operational reference for export and import:
- How to migrate an application across installations — the end-to-end flow from source export to destination import.
- How to export an environment — the dashboard surface, the resulting manifest, what is and is not included.
- How to import an environment — the three input modes (local file, URL, JPS editor) and the choices the import flow asks for.