Question about the local Vault

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1

Hi everyone,

I plan to install Bitwarden Self Hosted on a Windows Server with Docker. If the Server is ever down or under Maintenance, can Users still access their Vault or is an constant Client-Server Connection needed?

Thanks in regards

2

If the clients haven’t logged out, when the server is inaccessible, the clients will access the local encrypted vault in a read-only mode.

From BW’s cloud storage (not the self-hosting), this is reliable if “inaccessible” means you don’t have a network connection. However, if you have a network connection, but there is maintenance going on with the server, users sometimes experience an automatic logout resulting in the vault being completely inaccessible until the server comes up. I personally haven’t ever experienced being logged out during server maintenance period.

Takeaways are:

  1. If you want an iron-clad guarantee, use an offline PWM as a backup, importing from the BW’s exported vault.
  2. If you start having some sort of connection problems on your desktop/browser, consider turning off the network connections on the mobile to use the mobile’s local vault.