The next few sections describe how to prepare for and then to create an NDB Cluster backup using the functionality for this purpose found in the ndb_mgm management client. To distinguish this type of backup from a backup made using mysqldump, we sometimes refer to it as a “native” NDB Cluster backup. (For information about the creation of backups with mysqldump, see Section 6.5.4, “mysqldump — A Database Backup Program”.) Restoration of NDB Cluster backups is done using the ndb_restore utility provided with the NDB Cluster distribution; for information about ndb_restore and its use in restoring NDB Cluster backups, see Section 25.5.23, “ndb_restore — Restore an NDB Cluster Backup”.

It is also possible to create backups using multiple LDMs to achieve parallelism on the data nodes. See Section 25.6.8.5, “Taking an NDB Backup with Parallel Data Nodes”.