Clone Application in PaaS Native

This guide explains how to clone an application in Shopware PaaS Native. Cloning creates a copy of an existing application, including its codebase and data, to a new application within the same organization.

INFO

Cloning can only take place between applications within the same organization. You cannot clone applications across different organizations.

The cloning process works by creating a snapshot of the source application and then restoring that snapshot to the target application.

Use cases

Common scenarios for cloning applications include:

• Feature testing: Clone an application to test new features without affecting the original
• Disaster recovery: Create backups by cloning applications to different projects
• Development environments: Clone production data to development environments for realistic testing

Prerequisites

Before cloning an application, ensure that:

• Both the source and target applications are within the same organization
• You have access to both the source and target projects
• The target application already exists (or you have permissions to create it)
• The latest deployment of the source application was successful (state: DEPLOYING_STORE_SUCCESS)

You can check the deployment status with the following command:

sw-paas app deploy list

WARNING

If the state is DEPLOYING_STORE_FAILED, you should NOT proceed with cloning. Fix the deployment issues first or proceed with an earlier deployment that was successful.

Clone an application

You can clone an application using either interactive mode or manual mode

Interactive mode

If you run the clone command without any parameters, the CLI will guide you through an interactive selection process:

sw-paas application clone

The interactive mode will prompt you to select:

1. Source application selection:

   • Organization (if you have access to multiple)
   • Project within the organization
   • Application within the project
   • Deployment

2. Target application selection:

   • Project within the same organization (only projects from the selected organization will be shown)
   • Application within the project (the target application must already exist)

This interactive mode is recommended if you're unsure about the specific IDs or prefer a guided experience.

Manual mode

If you know the specific IDs, you can provide them directly as command-line flags:

sw-paas application clone \
  --organization-id <organization-id> \
  --project-id <source-project-id> \
  --application-id <source-application-id> \
  --target-application-id <target-application-id> \
  --target-project-id <target-project-id>

Clone process

The cloning process happens in two stages:

1. Snapshot creation: The system creates a snapshot of the source application, including its database and filesystem data
2. Snapshot restoration: The snapshot is then restored to the target application, overwriting any existing data

This ensures that the target application receives an exact copy of the source application's state at the time of the selected deployment.

Monitor clone progress

After initiating the clone, you can monitor the progress using:

sw-paas app deploy list

Or get detailed information about a specific deployment:

sw-paas app deploy get

The clone operation may take some time, depending on the size of the application data. Wait until the deployment status shows DEPLOYING_STORE_SUCCESS before considering the clone to be complete.

Post-clone tasks

After the clone is successfully completed, you must perform the following tasks:

Update admin password

For clarity, we'll refer to the source application as App A and the cloned (target) application as App B.

App B will have the same admin password as App A. For security reasons, you should update the admin password in App B.

To access the Shopware Administration and retrieve the admin credentials for App B, select the correct App, in this case App A, from the interactive menu:

sw-paas open admin

To log in to the Admin dashboard the first time after cloning, you can use the password from App A. Just rerun the sw-paas open admin command for App A to fetch the admin password.

You can update the admin password through the UI:

1. Log in to the Shopware Administration of App B using the credentials shown by the sw-paas open admin command for App A
2. Navigate to your user profile (click on your username in the bottom left corner)
3. Go to Your profile and scroll to the Password section
4. Enter the password displayed by the sw-paas open admin command for App B as the new password
5. Next, in the verification modal that opens, use the password for App A

Alternatively, you can update the admin password using the Shopware console command. Open an exec session:

sw-paas exec --new

Once you're in the session, run the following command to update the admin password:

bin/console user:change-password admin

Follow the prompts to set a new password for the admin user.

Update domain in sales channel

The cloned application will have the same domain configuration as the source application. You need to update the domain in the sales channel to match the cloned application's domain.

1. Access the Shopware Administration of the cloned application
2. From the left hand side menu pick the sales channel you want to update
3. Scroll to the Domains section
4. Update the domain to match the cloned application's domain (e.g., the shopware.shop domain assigned to the cloned application, or your custom domain if configured)