I found myself with some spare time the other day and decided that my current mysql backup strategy is not the best in the world. The mysql server is a virtual machine in a Brisbane datacenter and it's backed up via a script that calls mysqldump on each installed database and dumps the content to (compressed) files. These files then get sucked down via rdiff-backup.

This is fine in principle, but does mean it's possible for me to lose 24 hours worth of data due to an accidental '--; DROP table students.

A more ideal way would be for the remote sql server to replicate to a local one, on which I can run mysqldump more often without affecting web site performance. (Replication would replicate the DROP table statement too.. :-)

With a bit of a confluence of attending three days of OpenQuery mysql training and needing to regenerate all ssl keys, I thought I should …

At the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo, Chander Kant of Zmanda delivered a keynote on "Radically Simple Backup & Recovery for Live MySQL". Get the slides on the Forge at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2008ThursdayNotes#Radically_Simple_Backup_.26_Recovery_for_Live_MySQL

At the 2008 MySQL User Conference and Expo, Lenz Grimmer spoke about "Performing MySQL Backups Using LVM Snapshots". Download the slides, see people's notes, and more on the MySQL Forge Wiki at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2008WednesdayNotes#Performing_MySQL_Backups_Using_LVM_Snapshots

A well thought backup saved my skin last Saturday.
It's a simple setup: many copies. Using MySQL replication, the master is for writes.
Four slaves for reads. One slave for backups only (*). In a different server room. In a different building. (**)
The backup slave has a  cron job, which stops the slave, makes a dump, removes the oldest one, and resumes replication.
The same job works hourly (keeps 30 dumps), daily (keeps 7 dumps), and weekly (keeps 8 dumps).
The disaster occurred yesterday. A colleague who was working too much (***) made a destructive query on the wrong server. He thought he was using the development server, but it turned out to be the master. Fortunately, nobody else was working on a Saturday, so there weren't any changes, besides his. I zeroed the database on the master and reloaded the latest hourly dump. No suffering. No bad …

JFYI, I now placed a PDF of my MySQL Conference talk slides about "Performing MySQL backups using Linux LVM Snapshots" on my MySQL talks page. Enjoy!

This past week was the annual MySQL Users’ Conference. It was my fourth time attending the conference, my second as a MySQL-er, and my first as a Sun employee.

The conference was very well attended with many more people than last year. Overall, I’d say it was a great success.

I work on the Backup project for MySQL and I must say it was a very strange experience being in the spotlight of so much controversy concerning the announcement made about making some backup features enterprise only releases.

While there was a lot of blogging expressing the general distaste for the suggestion of making some features of backup enterprise only (as opposed to free), most of these comments seemed to come from a relatively small number of people.

I presented the Backup session and led the Birds of a Feather session on Backup. I must say that the sentiments of the bloggers was not represented in the audience of these sessions. I …

This past week was the annual MySQL Users’ Conference. It was my fourth time attending the conference, my second as a MySQL-er, and my first as a Sun employee.

The conference was very well attended with many more people than last year. Overall, I’d say it was a great success.

I work on the Backup project for MySQL and I must say it was a very strange experience being in the spotlight of so much controversy concerning the announcement made about making some backup features enterprise only releases.

While there was a lot of blogging expressing the general distaste for the suggestion of making some features of backup enterprise only (as opposed to free), most of these comments seemed to come from a relatively small number of people.

I presented the Backup session and led the Birds of a Feather session on Backup. I must say that the sentiments of the bloggers was not represented in the audience of these sessions. I …

This past week was the annual MySQL Users’ Conference. It was my fourth time attending the conference, my second as a MySQL-er, and my first as a Sun employee.

The conference was very well attended with many more people than last year. Overall, I’d say it was a great success.

I work on the Backup project for MySQL and I must say it was a very strange experience being in the spotlight of so much controversy concerning the announcement made about making some backup features enterprise only releases.

While there was a lot of blogging expressing the general distaste for the suggestion of making some features of backup enterprise only (as opposed to free), most of these comments seemed to come from a relatively small number of people.

I presented the Backup session and led the Birds of a Feather session on Backup. I must say that the sentiments of the bloggers was not represented in the audience of these sessions. I …

In 3 words:

They already do.

MySQL Enterprise is more than just a binary. http://mysql.com/products/enterprise/ has the details on the other features MySQL Enterprise includes.

One of these features is the MySQL Enterprise Monitor, which is closed source, proprietary alerting software.

So when bloggers make statements such as:

MySQL will start offering some features (specifically ones related to online backups) only in MySQL Enterprise. This represents a substantive change to their development model ? previously they have been developing features in both MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise. However, with a shift to offering some features only in MySQL Enterprise, this means a shift to development of those features occurring (and thus code being …

While reading Colin's post about LugRadio Live, I stumbled over the Zumastor Linux Storage Project. Going through the project home page and their HOWTO got me curious - could this eventually become an alternative to using DRBD (for replicating data) and LVM snapshots (for performing backups)?

Zumastor is Free software that adds enterprise storage features (primarily improved snapshots and remote replication) to Linux.

Snapshots

LVM already lets administrators create snapshots, but its design has the surprising property that every block you change on the original volume consumes one block for each snapshot. The resulting speed and space penalty …