MySQL backup module from Bacula Systems

MySQL backup with Percona support for enterprises.

The MySQL backup tool in Bacula Enterprise is designed to both simplify and accelerate the backup of your MySQL databases. Designed to save your valuable time, the system administrator does not need to know the internals of MySQL DB backup techniques or programming to write complex scripts. This MySQL backup software will automatically backup essential information such as configuration or user definitions. Putting speed and accurate data recovery into the hands of the user, our solution supports both Dump and binary backup of MySQL database and data recovery techniques.

The Point In Time Recovery feature is available for both Dump and Binary. Bacula’s MySQL backup tool also backs up vital meta-data information and manages Object filtering during database backup and restore. No special scripting skills are required.

This MySQL backup tool is available on Linux 32 and 64 bits platforms and supports nearly all previous versions of MySQL, up to and including 8.0.

How to add MySQL backup client in Bacula?

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Using an Enterprise, High-Transaction-Rate MySQL DB? 

With enterprise, high-transaction-rate MySQL databases, backup and restore recovery-time-objectives often become critically important even to the point that financial value can be attached to them. They often have business impact if they are down too long. The longer the restore takes the more money you lose. Bacula’s MySQL Percona module offers one of the fastest and easiest MySQL backup and recovery available in the industry today.

Enterprise MySQL Backup with Percona Module

MySQL Percona module for Bacula Enterprise is a hot backup utility for MySQL-based servers which removes the need to lock your database during the backup.

This module uses techniques that ensure consistency of the whole backup. Another advantage is that Bacula’s Percona backup software does not require the use of large temporary files.

During restore, databases are restored to a temporary location, then made consistent using the ‘Prepare’ option on the Percona tools, prior to actually modifying the live database. Rather than doing the ‘Prepare’ work to make the database consistent at restore time, the ‘Prepare’ can be done automatically by the module during the backup phase.

Use Bacula to avoid using multiple backup solutions, or having inadequate protection from ransomware.

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MySQL Backup Software Internals

Dump Mode

During a database’s life, MySQL generates logs that can be used to do replication and/or protect your database using P.I.T.R (Point In Time Recovery).

By default, the MySQL backup software from Bacula will dump each database separately, which means that if you need to restore the entire server, databases will be consistent separately, but they are not backed up at exactly the same time, so the databases are not globally consistent. To address this issue, the Bacula Enterprise MySQL backup tool will also save log files generated during the backup. These log files may later be played back to ensure that the databases are consistent at a particular point in time.

In the example presented in Figure 1, during the backup of the databases “DB1”, “DB2” and “DB3” (that can take several hours), 3 log files were generated, and will be included in the Full backup.

Interaction between Backup and Binary Logs

The next incremental or differential backup will save only new binary logs generated after the Full. To ensure that only one copy of each log file is included in your backup, you should activate the Accurate option for your Job.

In the example show above, the first Incremental job after the Full backup will include logs 5 and 6, and the second Incremental job will include logs 7 and 8. A Differential backup would include log files 5, 6, 7 and 8.

When you use the all_databases option, all databases will be dumped at the same time, and the log files will not be flushed at the end of the Full backup, but logs generated before the end of the job are included in the backup. In the example shown in Figure 2, the Full backup will generate a single dump “all-databases.sql” and will include log files 2 and 3. The first subsequent Incremental backup will include log files 4, 5 and 6.

Interaction between all_databases option and Binary Logs

• Don’t know about Bacula Enterprise’s capabilities? See the enterprise feature list.
• Intrested in backup capabilities for Windows-based systems? Take a look at our Exchange backup and Windows server backup software.