+Before transferring your database, you may want to clean it up; ensure the expiration of database items is set to a reasonable value and activated via the administrator panel.
+*Admin* > *Site* > *Performance* > Enable "Clean up database"
+After adjusting these settings, the database cleaning up processes will be initiated according to your configured daily cron job.
+
+To review the size of your database, log into MySQL with ``mysql -p`` run the following query:
+````
+SELECT table_schema AS "Database", SUM(data_length + index_length) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 AS "Size (GB)" FROM information_schema.TABLES GROUP BY table_schema;
+````
+
+You should see an output like this:
+````
++--------------------+----------------+
+| Database | Size (GB) |
++--------------------+----------------+
+| friendica_db | 8.054092407227 |
+| [..........] | [...........] |
++--------------------+----------------+
+````
+
+Finally, you may also want to optimise your database with the following command: ``mysqloptimize -p friendica-db``
+
+### Going offline
+Stop background tasks and put your server in maintenance mode.
+1. If you had set up a worker cron job like this ``*/10 * * * * cd /var/www/friendica; /usr/bin/php bin/worker.php`` run ``crontab -e`` and comment out this line. Alternatively if you deploy a worker daemon, disable this instead.
+2. Put your server into maintenance mode: ``bin/console maintenance 1 "We are currently upgrading our system and will be back soon."``
+
+## Dumping DB
+Export your database: ``mysqldump -p friendica_db > friendica_db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql`` and possibly compress it.