Golden Images

Backups are for recovery. Golden images are for reuse.

Terrarium's normal backup flow gives you a time machine for existing containers: you can roll back a broken app, restore a snapshot as a separate container, or export restore points to S3. A golden image is different. It is a named template you can launch again and again.

Create a Golden Image

Start with a container that is already configured the way you want:

trm image create web-01 golden-web

Terrarium creates a temporary snapshot, copies it to a temporary instance, removes published-route proxy config from that copy, publishes the image, and cleans up the temporary resources.

If you already made the snapshot you want to preserve, publish that snapshot:

lxc snapshot web-01 known-good
trm image create web-01 golden-web --snapshot known-good

If the image alias already exists and you want to replace it:

trm image create web-01 golden-web --snapshot known-good --reuse

Launch From a Golden Image

Use the alias as the image name:

trm image launch golden-web web-02 --profile dev

You can still set basic launch-time resources:

trm image launch golden-web web-03 --profile dev --disk 40G --memory 4G --cpu 2

And you can publish the new container with a fresh route:

trm image launch golden-web web-04 --proxy https://web-04.example.com:8080

Manage Images

List images:

trm image list

Delete an image alias when you no longer need it:

trm image delete golden-web

When to Use This

Use golden images for:

• base development containers with your tools already installed
• app templates you launch repeatedly
• known-good agent environments before a large experiment

Use backups instead when you need to recover an existing container's history or export data off the server.