Once upon a time, Phil Stracchino <ala...@metrocast.net> said: > You also mentioned "SQL/mail". You should not be backing up SQL DBs at > the file level. Doing so does not guarantee a consistent backup of the > DB because there is time skew between the beginning and end of the DB > backup (and can be time skew even within individual tables). If all > you're doing is a file-level backup of the DB data directories, you > almost certainly only *think* you have backups of your DB.
If you don't want to go for DB-specific backup tools, you can get a consistent backup of most databases with a filesystem or volume snapshot, as long as you prepare the database for the snapshot. For example (on the small DB end), MySQL has a command to freeze and flush in-memory buffers, "flush tables with read lock". You can have a script that connects to MySQL, runs the command, snapshots the filesystem or volume, and then runs "unlock tables". A backup of the snapshot should give you a consistent MySQL backup. Other databases have similar (sometimes more complicated) methods that don't require a full dump. -- Chris Adams <cmad...@hiwaay.net> Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware, SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial. Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications! http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
