MySQL Enterprise Backup User's Guide (Version 3.11.1)
To verify the backup, restore the backup data on a different
server and run the MySQL daemon (mysqld) on
the new data directory. Then you can execute
SHOW
statements to verify the database and
table structure, and execute queries to verify the number of
rows, latest updates, and so on.
This is the same general technique to use when you intend to put the backup data to some other use. For example, you might set up a replication slave by making a backup of the master server, or turn a backup into a new MySQL instance for running report queries.
Always do verification against restored data, rather than
running mysqld with
datadir
pointing to the backup directory.
The SQL statements you use to verify the data change the
underlying logical sequence
number, which would interfere with using the backup
directory for subsequent incremental backups.
If you did the backup with the
backup-and-apply-log
option as in
the previous example, the backup data is fully consistent and
ready to verify. If you only ran the first stage by using the
backup
option, run
mysqlbackup a second time with the
apply-log
option before doing this
verification. (Typically, you run this second phase on the other
server after transferring the backup data there, to minimize the
load on the original database server.)
See Chapter 4, Recovering or Restoring a Database for the procedure to restore the database files on a different server.
Running the mysqld daemon on the restored
data requires a valid configuration file, which you specify with
the --defaults-file
option of
the mysqld command. You can reuse most of the
settings from the original my.cnf
file,
combined with the backup-my.cnf
file in the
backup directory, which contains only the small subset of
parameters required by mysqlbackup. Create a
new configuration file by concatenating those two files into a
new one, and use that configuration file on the server where you
do the verification. Edit the resulting file to make sure the
datadir
parameter points to the right
location on the verification server. directory. Edit the values
for port, socket, and so on if you need to use different
connection settings on the verification server.