There's a great sense of reassurance in knowing that your MySQL instance is regularly backed up and ready to be restored. It's a job that tends to get pushed off to last, but until it's done there's no escaping that nagging thought that you are vulnerable.

This session on planning and executing a backup and restore of MySQL data starts with a review of the often-overlooked pre-implementation steps important to consider. After looking at the planning process we'll delve into the variety of ways the plan can be accomplished with existing tools or by building one yourself.

Planning
What, I have to plan this? Yes, the first step in backing up data is asking users of the data what they require from a backup and restore. There are a slew of questions one might ask, which include:

• Why are you backing up the data?
• What needs to be backed up?
• How frequently does the backup need to occur?
• How long should the backup be preserved?
• Where should the backup be stored?
• What are the restore expectations?
• Who can request restoration of what parts of the data?

Executing
With requirements in hand, you're ready to look at existing tools. This presentation will review the following tools:

• filesystem backups
• mysqldump
• mysqlhotcopy
• InnoDB Hot Backup (ibbackup)
• innobackup
• cluster
• MySQL Administrator

This session will look at each of these tools, where they can be used, how they meet a variety of backup and restore requirements, and how to execute a backup and restore using them. The session concludes with a look at building a custom backup tool.