Overview
There is one important thing regarding backups for MySQL, IT IS ENGINE DEPENDENT, which means that different engines are using different methods to provide backups. Before we start to speak about backups we should set up some common terms. In nutshell there are 3 types of backups:
- Online: Fully online. Selects and DML are possible.
- Warm: Kind of a online. Users are able to do selects, but no DML.
- Cold: Offline. The entire structure, which we are backing up, is down.
As for data content type there are two:
- Incremental: Backup only the changed data
- Full: Backup up everything
And as a data access type (the way we access the data for the backup) there are again two:
- Physical: Backup of the physical data files.
- Logical: Backup of the data content, requires running database in order to be backed up AND restored. A lot of limitations regarding object related objects (views, foreign keys and others)
A backup can be: Online, Full and Physical, depending on the engine capabilities.