Creating a Backup with innobackupex¶
innobackupex is the tool which provides functionality to backup a whole MySQL database instance using the xtrabackup in combination with tools like xbstream and xbcrypt.
To create a full backup, invoke the script with the options needed to connect to the server and only one argument: the path to the directory where the backup will be stored
$ innobackupex --user=DBUSER --password=DBUSERPASS /path/to/BACKUP-DIR/
and check the last line of the output for a confirmation message:
innobackupex: Backup created in directory '/path/to/BACKUP-DIR/2013-03-25_00-00-09'
innobackupex: MySQL binlog position: filename 'mysql-bin.000003', position 1946
111225 00:00:53 innobackupex: completed OK!
The backup will be stored within a time stamped directory created in the
provided path, /path/to/BACKUP-DIR/2013-03-25_00-00-09 in this
particular example.
Under the hood¶
innobackupex called xtrabackup binary to backup all the data of InnoDB
tables (see Creating a backup for details on this
process) and copied all the table definitions in the database (.frm
files), data and files related to MyISAM, MERGE <.MRG> (reference to
other tables), CSV <.CSV> and ARCHIVE <.ARM> tables, along with
triggers <.TRG> and database configuration information <.opt> to
a time stamped directory created in the provided path.
It will also create the following files for convenience on the created directory.
innobackupex --no-timestamp¶
This option tells innobackupex not to create a time stamped directory to store the backup:
innobackupex --user=DBUSER --password=DBUSERPASS /path/to/BACKUP-DIR/ --no-timestamp
innobackupex will create the BACKUP-DIR subdirectory (or fail if exists) and store the backup inside of it.
innobackupex --defaults-file¶
You can provide another configuration file to innobackupex with this option. The only limitation is that it has to be the first option passed:
$ innobackupex --defaults-file=/tmp/other-my.cnf --user=DBUSER --password=DBUSERPASS /path/to/BACKUP-DIR/