15.1 Backup Operations

The backup operations are the most frequently performed tasks by MySQL Enterprise Backup. Various kinds of backups can be performed by adding different options, like using --compress or --incremental for compressed or incremental backups. Here is the syntax for the mysqlbackup commands for performing a backup operation:

mysqlbackup [STD-OPTIONS]
            [CONNECTION-OPTIONS]
            [SERVER-REPOSITORY-OPTIONS]
            [BACKUP-REPOSITORY-OPTIONS]
            [METADATA-OPTIONS]
            [COMPRESSION-OPTIONS]
            [SPECIAL-BACKUP-TYPES-OPTIONS]
            [INCREMENTAL-BACKUP-OPTIONS]
            [PARTIAL-BACKUP-RESTORE-OPTIONS]
            [SINGLE-FILE-BACKUP-OPTIONS]
            [PERFORMANCE-SCALABILITY-CAPACITY-OPTIONS]            
            [MESSAGE-LOGGING-OPTIONS]
            [PROGRESS-REPORT-OPTIONS]
            [ENCRYPTION-OPTIONS]
            [CLOUD-STORAGE-OPTIONS]
            [ENCRYPTED-INNODB-OPTIONS]
            backup-to-image

mysqlbackup [STD-OPTIONS]
            [CONNECTION-OPTIONS]
            [SERVER-REPOSITORY-OPTIONS]
            [BACKUP-REPOSITORY-OPTIONS]
            [METADATA-OPTIONS]
            [COMPRESSION-OPTIONS]
            [SPECIAL-BACKUP-TYPES-OPTIONS]
            [INCREMENTAL-BACKUP-OPTIONS]
            [PARTIAL-BACKUP-RESTORE-OPTIONS]
            [PERFORMANCE-SCALABILITY-CAPACITY-OPTIONS]            
            [MESSAGE-LOGGING-OPTIONS]
            [PROGRESS-REPORT-OPTIONS]
            [ENCRYPTED-INNODB-OPTIONS]
            backup | backup-and-apply-log

backup-to-image
Produces a single-file backup holding the backup data. In most cases, single-file backups are preferred over directory backups, which are created using the backup command.
The command requires the --backup-image option to specify the destination file. Can be used to stream the backup to a storage device or another system without ever storing the data on the database server. You can specify --backup-image=-, representing standard output, allowing the output to be piped to another command. To avoid mixing normal informational messages with backup output, the --help message, errors, alerts, and normal informational messages are always printed to standard error stream.
The command also requires the use of the --backup-dir option to supply a temporary folder to save the backup metadata (including the mysqlbackup message log, the start and end LSN, and so on) and some temporary output. Note that, however, except when streaming the backup image with --backup-image=-, if --backup-image does not give a full path name, mysqlbackup will actually take the value of --backup-image as a path relative to the directory specified by --backup-dir, and thus store the single-file backup under --backup-dir (or, if the --with-timestamp option is used, under a subdirectory created under --backup-dir that bears the timestamp in its name).
backup
Backs up data to a directory. In most cases, single-file backups, which are created using the backup-to-image command, are preferred over directory backups.
The command only performs the initial phase of a complete backup process. The second phase is performed later by running mysqlbackup again with the apply-log command, which makes the backup consistent.
backup-and-apply-log
A combination of backup and apply-log. It cannot be used for an incremental backup.