Export/import is useful especially if you want to migrate your whole Keycloak database from one environment to another or migrate to different database (For example from MySQL to Oracle). You can trigger export/import at startup of Keycloak server and it's configurable with System properties right now. The fact it's done at server startup means that no-one can access Keycloak UI or REST endpoints and edit Keycloak database on the fly when export or import is in progress. Otherwise it could lead to inconsistent results. You can export/import your database either to: Encrypted ZIP file on local filesystem Directory on local filesystem Single JSON file on your filesystem When importing using the "dir" or "zip" strategies, note that the files need to follow the naming convention specified below. If you are importing files which were previously exported, the files already follow this convention. {REALM_NAME}-realm.json, such as "acme-roadrunner-affairs-realm.json" for the realm named "acme-roadrunner-affairs" {REALM_NAME}-users-{INDEX}.json, such as "acme-roadrunner-affairs-users-0.json" for the first users file of the realm named "acme-roadrunner-affairs" Encrypted ZIP is recommended as export contains many sensitive informations like passwords of your users (even if they are hashed), but also their email addresses, and especially private keys of the realms. Directory and Single JSON file are useful especially for testing as data in the files are not protected. On the other hand, it's useful if you want to look at all your data in JSON files directly. If you import to ZIP or Directory, you can specify also the number of users to be stored in each JSON file. So if you have very large amount of users in your database, you likely don't want to import them into single file as the file might be very big. Processing of each file is done in separate transaction as exporting/importing all users at once could also lead to memory issues. So to export the content of your Keycloak database into encrypted ZIP, you can execute Keycloak server with the System properties like: -Dkeycloak.migration.zipPassword= ]]> Then you can move or copy the encrypted ZIP file into second environment and you can trigger import from it into Keycloak server with the same command but use -Dkeycloak.migration.action=import instead of export . To export into unencrypted directory you can use: ]]> And similarly for import just use -Dkeycloak.migration.action=import instead of export . To export into single JSON file you can use: ]]> Here's an example of importing: -Dkeycloak.migration.strategy=OVERWRITE_EXISTING ]]> Other available options are: -Dkeycloak.migration.realmName can be used if you want to export just one specified realm instead of all. If not specified, then all realms will be exported. -Dkeycloak.migration.usersExportStrategy can be used to specify for ZIP or Directory providers to specify where to import users. Possible values are: DIFFERENT_FILES - Users will be exported into more different files according to maximum number of users per file. This is default value SKIP - exporting of users will be skipped completely REALM_FILE - All users will be exported to same file with realm (So file like "foo-realm.json" with both realm data and users) SAME_FILE - All users will be exported to same file but different than realm (So file like "foo-realm.json" with realm data and "foo-users.json" with users) -Dkeycloak.migration.usersPerFile can be used to specify number of users per file (and also per DB transaction). It's 5000 by default. It's used only if usersExportStrategy is DIFFERENT_FILES -Dkeycloak.migration.strategy is used during import. It can be used to specify how to proceed if realm with same name already exists in the database where you are going to import data. Possible values are: IGNORE_EXISTING - Ignore importing if realm of this name already exists OVERWRITE_EXISTING - Remove existing realm and import it again with new data from JSON file. If you want to fully migrate one environment to another and ensure that the new environment will contain same data like the old one, you can specify this. When importing realm files that weren't exported before, the option keycloak.import can be used. If more than one realm file needs to be imported, a comma separated list of file names can be specified. This is more appropriate than the cases before, as this will happen only after the master realm has been initialized. Examples: -Dkeycloak.import=/tmp/realm1.json -Dkeycloak.import=/tmp/realm1.json,/tmp/realm2.json