1. MySQL Backup solutions
Liz van Dijk - @lizztheblizz
Zarafa Summer Camp - June 2012

2. Percona
MySQL/LAMP Consulting
● MySQL Support
● (co-)Developers of
○ Percona Server (XtraDB)
○ Percona XtraBackup
○ Percona Toolkit (Maatkit, Aspersa)
○ Percona XtraDB Cluster
http://www.percona.com
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com

3. Topics
● Why MySQL Backup is hard to get right
● What's available on the market?
● Percona's Solution: XtraBackup
● Demo

4. MySQL Backup Challenges
● MySQL is multi-engine
○ Different storage engines call for different strategies
■ Are we using filecopy or dumps?
■ MyISAM tables handle filecopy quite well
■ InnoDB files cannot simply be copied elsewhere
● MySQL can be quite busy
○ Do we need to shut it down?
○ If not, how much load is generated?
○ How quickly can we restore?
● MySQL is more than the sum of its datafiles
○ How about binary logging, replication?
○ Does the tool impact MySQL in other ways?

5. Available backup solutions (InnoDB)
Backup Restore
InnoDB Impact Warmth
Time Time
Cold Backup very high cold very fast fast
mysqldump medium hot medium slow
snapshotting high/medium hot/warm fast fast
MySQL EB low hot fast fast
(Enterprise Backup)
XtraBackup low hot fast fast

6. Available backup solutions (mixed)
InnoDB/ Backup Restore
Impact Warmth
MyISAM Time Time
Cold Backup very high cold very fast fast
mysqldump high warm medium slow
snapshotting high/medium hot/warm fast fast
MySQL EB low/medium warm fast fast
(Enterprise Backup)
XtraBackup low/medium warm fast fast

7. XtraBackup Features
● Shared with MySQL Enterprise Backup
○ Non-blocking
○ Support for MyISAM
○ Compression
○ Partial Backups
○ Throttling
○ Incremental Backups
● Unique to XtraBackup
○ Exporting/Importing individual tables
○ Streaming (including incremental streaming since 2.0!)
○ Parallel copying (with use of innodb_file_per_table)
http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/intro.html

8. XtraBackup Inner Workings

9. XtraBackup/innobackupex Operation
Performing and restoring a mixed full backup:
Backing up (1):
1. Copy datafiles while recording transaction log changes
2. FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
3. Get binlog position
4. Copy all .MYD, .MYI, .TRG, .TRN, ... files
5. Stop recording transaction log changes
6. UNLOCK TABLES;
Preparing/Restoring:
7. Prepare backup by applying recorded tlog changes (2)
8. Restoring files to original location (3)

10. Getting down to business...
innobackupex vs. xtrabackup?
xtrabackup - Compiled C application, focuses on InnoDB
only
innobackupex - Perl script, automates surrounding tasks
3 separate "manual" steps are required:
(1) - Backing up
(2) - Preparing InnoDB files for recovery
(3) - Restoring the files
All of these are easily scriptable!

11. Some recipes
Simple full backup and restore:
(1) # innobackupex /path/to/your/backups
(2) # innobackupex --apply-log /path/to/your/backups/2012-06-
21_13-45-00/
(3) # innobackupex --copy-back /path/to/your/backups/2012-06-
21_13-45-00/
# chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql

12. Options
● Specified as --variable-name=value
● innobackupex/xtrabackup will read options from your config
○ [client] or [mysql] for credentials
○ [mysqld] for location of datadir, InnoDB startup options
○ Lastly, [xtrabackup] to override any of the previous and
specify xtrabackup-specific options*
* percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/xtrabackup_bin/xbk_option_reference.html
* percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/innobackupex/innobackupex_option_reference.html

13. Some recipes
Incremental backup:
● Repeat (1) to create a full backup at location $fullbackup
● # innobackupex --incremental $incbackup --incremental-
basedir=$fullbackup
● # innobackupex --apply-log --redo-only $fullbackup
■ Preparing the base backup FIRST
● # innobackupex --apply-log --redo-only $fullbackup --incremental-
basedir=$incbackup
■ Applying each incremental backup to the base
● # innobackupex --apply-log $fullbackup
■ Finish preparing the now completed base backup

14. Some recipes
Streaming:
# innobackupex --stream=tar ./ | ssh user@desthost "cat - > /data/backups/backup.
tar"
Note: Extract with tar -i!
Filtering tablespaces: --tables, --databases, --tables-file
Throttling:
● Limit to 100 read/writes IOs: --throttle=100
● In streaming backup, use pv to limit to 10MB/s
○ # innobackupex --stream=tar ./ | pv -q -L10m | ssh user@desthost "cat - >
/data/backups/backup.tar"
Parallel copying of tablespaces: --parallel 2 #threads

15. A note about versions
● xtrabackup 1.6
● xtrabackup 2.0 (GA since 4 April 2012)
○ Backs up galera cluster information
○ Supports parallel compression
○ Streaming incremental backups
○ Backs up LRU dumpfile
Note: When using the xtrabackup binary directly, make sure to
use the correct binary for your MySQL version!

16. Short demo

17. Percona Live New York MySQL Conference
NYC, NY - October 1 & 2 2012