There are several ways to take backups of MySql, and though not all are great, it really depends a lot on your situation. Having recently found the need for some heavy backing up, I had to do some deep research and decided to share. Here are some thought processes to use when choosing a backup strategy.
mysqldump
If your data set is small (I realize “small” is a relative term.. to qualify it, let’s say <10GB), then mysqldump will probably work great. It’s easy, it’s online and it’s very flexible. Just a few things mysqldump can do:
backup everything or just certain databases or tables backup only the DDL optimize the dump for a faster restore make the resultant sql file more compatible with other RDBMSes and much more…
However, the most important options are related to the consistency of your backup. My favorite options are: [More]
