• 
  
• Consistent backup:
  A consistent backup is one that represents a snapshot of all data at a point in time. Consistent backups are used for disaster recovery. An inconsistent backup can be useful for retrieving partial data — for example, if a long-time customer accidentally deletes information from his profile, you can go back to an inconsistent backup and retrieve that information. It is not important that all the data be consistent with each other when retrieving a partial amount of point-in-time data.
• Logical backups:
  Logical backups are backups that contain SQL statements to create and populate tables. In MySQL, logical backups can only be done while mysqld is running, and are usually done with the mysqldump tool. mysqldump can logically export (”dump”) multiple databases, tables, views, stored routines, triggers and events. It can …

A while back, Ted Ts’o asked for a incremental backup solution that used a database. It reminded me of the talk at the 2009 MySQL Conference & Expo, titled Build your own MySQL time machine.

Chuck and Mats will talk about the backup and replication code, and will show off a web interface, that allows you to go back in time, similar to Apple’s Time Machine in Mac OS X. Its a talk that I most certainly want to attend, as an avid Time Machine user.

Register for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 before February 16, and you’ll get an early bird discount (saving $200). April …

How To Back Up MySQL Databases With mylvmbackup On Ubuntu 8.10

mylvmbackup is a Perl script for quickly creating MySQL backups. It uses LVM's snapshot feature to do so. To perform a backup, mylvmbackup obtains a read lock on all tables and flushes all server caches to disk, creates a snapshot of the volume containing the MySQL data directory, and unlocks the tables again. This article shows how to use it on an Ubuntu 8.10 server.

In case you were wondering, after seeing this self-defined tutorial, backing up MySQL 5.1 partitioned tables does not require any particular additional technology.
This tutorial presents MySQL 5.1 in a short paragraph, and then starts talking about a commercial backup application, as if it were the only way of backing up partitioned tables.
The title, for sure, is misleading. Backing Up MySQL Partitioned Tables. Reading such a title, readers expect either a list of possible solutions, or being presented with the only existing way of dealing with this task. Instead, the only instructions that you get is how to use the above mentioned tool, which is definitely not the only way of getting the job done. It is also doubly misleading because, since partitioning is a new technology, the casual reader may think "oh? What's peculiar with …

ZRM 2.1: Backing Up MySQL Partitioned Tables

MySQL 5.1 is generally available for production use. One of the key features of MySQL 5.1 is partitioning. This how to shows how to install and configure Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL (ZRM) 2.1 to perform backup and recovery of MySQL partitioned tables.

Some days ago, I released version 0.11 of mylvmbackup a Perl script that performs consistent backups of a MySQL server by using LVM filesystem snapshots. The source archive as well as a generic RPM can be found on the project home page, packages for many Linux distributions are available on the openSUSE Build service.

This release includes some new functionality as well as numerous bug fixes and improvements, most notably:

• Added support for using rsnap as a backup backend (Matt Lohier)
• The documentation is now maintained in POD style instead of asciidoc (Matthew Boehm)
• Support using non-GNU tar and …

Some days ago, I released version 0.11 of mylvmbackup a Perl script that performs consistent backups of a MySQL server by using LVM filesystem snapshots. The source archive as well as a generic RPM can be found on the project home page, packages for many Linux distributions are available on the openSUSE Build service.

This release includes some new functionality as well as numerous bug fixes and improvements, most notably:

• Added support for using rsnap as a backup backend (Matt Lohier)
• The documentation is now maintained in POD style instead of asciidoc (Matthew Boehm)
• Support using non-GNU tar and …

The Umlaut Problem - How To Successfully Back Up And Restore MySQL Databases With Special Characters Using MySQLDumper

There are lots of forums with heaps of reports of umlauts or other special characters being displayed erroneously. Attempts to help come from many sides, but hardly anyone seems to have a really complete picture of the problem. Even web hosts' support hotlines seem to reach their limit of knowledge with this one. There are incredible amounts of half-truths. They prove correct in certain circumstances, but they do not help all people. Simply because setups vary so much. In my role as developer of MySQLDumper I naturally spent a lot of time evaluating this situation. And I now believe to be able to offer a complete overview which covers the different aspects of this problem. A lot, and I mean a lot of research has gone into the explanations in this article.

The mysqlbackup client program is now available for download as a feature preview. This program gives information about the produced backup image files and is a complement to the new MySQL 6.0 Backup feature. The program is not yet part of the main MySQL server releases.

So far, we have implemented the first milestone of WL#4534, e.g.:

• Display metadata contained in backup image (i.e the SQL statements)
• List objects contained in the backup image
• Display statistics about the backup image (e.g. compression algorithm)
• Search and display objects of backup image
• Search and display metadata of backup image objects
• In case of problems with reading the image provide as much information
  as possible, e.g. the position of the failure
  

The current preview …

Creating MySQL Backups With AutoMySQLBackup

AutoMySQLBackup is a shell script that lets you take daily, weekly and monthly backups of your MySQL databases using mysqldump. It can back up multiple databases, compress the backups, back up remote databases, and email the logs.