MySQL: Know your backup needs

Backups are the backbone of your data and having a bad strategy may lead you in big trouble. So it is important to have a good backup strategy in place according to your business needs. Every business has different backup needs. Some customers can't afford any downtime in their business while for some a little downtime is OK. That is why you should choose a reliable backup strategy that can work for your business. While developing a backup solution, keep following things in mind:

1. For how long can you afford the downtime?
2. What type of failures are the most common in your systems?
3. How fast MySQL recovery process should be?
4. How much can you spend on backup?
5. What will be the impact of backup and recovery process on your application?
6. Will it be ok for your business if the backup require shutting down MySQL?
7. Will you able to handle the backed up data?
8. Does the backup use any interrupting process that can slow down your system?

These are the most common things that you should know before choosing a good backup strategy for your business.

Which backup strategy should I choose?
Mysqldump: Backup your data with mysqldump command if your data is small. It can backup whole or partial database.

LVM snapshot: If your data is large then you can take snapshot of your data. This technique allow administrator to create an exact image of logical volume.

Cold backup: It is used when you want to backup only tables.

Know your backup needs:

1. Know the importance of data, its availability and requirement.
2. Plan your backup strategy according to above factors.
3. Weekly backup your data.
4. Test backup and restores.