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+# Backup and Restore Commands
+The backup and restore commands will add the capability to backup a list of artifacts from a registry and restore them to another registry.
+The artifacts that ill be supported are any OCI compatible artifact such as container images, helm charts and other artifacts.
+This feature will have many use cases, but the use case that will benefit the most is air gapped registries.
+These commands will allow copying artifacts to and from air gapped registries over the sneakernet or other limited communication channel.
+
+This document describes how the backup and restore commands will work and how the feature will be rolled out.
+The proposal is to create the feature as a minimum viable product and follow that up with non breaking features to the commands.
+
+## Minimum Viable Product
+
+The backup command will initially just support writing to a directory and the restore command will only support reading from a directory.
+As well as the flags described here, the commands will support the normal set of flags to support TLS and authentication.
+
+### oras backup
+
+The backup command will initially only support reading a list of atifacts from the command line and writing to a directory:
+
+```bash
+oras backup --output ./mirror  registry.k8s.io/kube-apiserver-arm64:v1.31.0 registry.k8s.io/kube-controller-manager-arm64:v1.31.0
+```
+
+The generated directory structure is `<specified-directory>/<repository>`.
+The command above puts the OCI layout for the Kubernetes API server in `mirror/kube-api-server-arm64`.
+The directory structure with intermediate blobs removed:
+
+```bash
+$ find mirror
+mirror
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/ingest
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/oci-layout
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/blobs
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/blobs/sha256
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/blobs/sha256/3f4e2c5863480125882d92060440a5250766bce764fee10acdbac18c872e4dc7
+...
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/blobs/sha256/4f80fb2b9442dbecd41e68b598533dcaaf58f9d45cce2e03a715499aa9f6b676
+mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64/index.json
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/ingest
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/oci-layout
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/blobs
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/blobs/sha256
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/blobs/sha256/3f4e2c5863480125882d92060440a5250766bce764fee10acdbac18c872e4dc7
+...
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/blobs/sha256/4f80fb2b9442dbecd41e68b598533dcaaf58f9d45cce2e03a715499aa9f6b676
+mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64/index.json
+$
+```
+
+The directory `mirror` must exist for the initial feature.
+Each image will be stored in a subdirectory which matches the repository name.
+
+### oras restore
+
+Initially, the restore command will support reading a directory and writing the content to a remote registry:
+
+```bash
+oras restore --input ./mirror localhost:15000/my-mirror
+```
+
+The above backup example would result in:
+```bash
+localhost:15000/my-mirror/kube-apiserver-arm64:v1.31.0
+localhost:15000/my-mirror/kube-controller-manager-arm64:v1.31.0
+```
+
+A namespace in the registry will be optional.
+The registry in the above example could be specified as `localhost:15000`.
+
+
+Any directory in the input that does not contain an `index.json` shall be silently ignored.
+
+## Compressed Tar File Support
+
+After the command supports directory write and read, support will be added for write and read to a compressed tar file.
+The directory structure in the tar file would be the same as in the directory output.
+
+```bash
+oras backup --output ./mirror.tgz  registry.k8s.io/kube-apiserver-arm64:v1.31.0 registry.k8s.io/kube-controller-manager-arm64:v1.31.0
+```
+
+There will be no validation on file name.
+The file name does not need to end in `tgz`, but the format will be compressed tar file.
+If the file exists, it will be overwritten.
+
+```bash
+oras restore --input ./mirror.tgz localhost:15000/my-mirror
+```
+If the specified source is a file, the format is assumed to be a compressed tar file.
+
+## Backup file input from a file
+
+The backup command will support an `--input filename` argument which will be a file containing the remote resources to retrieve.
+The format of the contents of the file is a list of images names separated by newlines.
+If the `--input` argument is specified, no images may be specified on the command line.
+
+## Backup file input from standard input
+
+The backup command will support the `--input -` argument to read a list of images from standard input.
+The format of the input is a list of images names separated by newlines.
+
+## Restore file input from standard input
+
+The restore command will support the `--input -` argument to read a compressed tar input from standard input.
+
+## Optimize blobs
+
+A further enhancement is to create blobs that are duplicated between images as hard links in the directory output and compressed tar files.