Introduction

The names of databases and tables within MySQL are known as identifiers. In the simplest case these identifiers are just strings of certain ASCII characters (the basic Latin letters, the digits 0-9, the dollar sign and the underscore). However, if an identifier is placed in quotes, it can contain any character of the full Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (except U+0000). We say that a character is a special character if it is permitted in a quoted identifier but not in an unquoted identifier.

MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) 3.12.1 introduces support for proper handling of table and database names with special characters. In MEB versions prior to 3.12.1 database and table names were represented as ASCII strings and the same string was used on the command line, internally within MEB and in filenames.  This caused MEB to fail some …

Introduction

MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.12.0 (MEB) introduces a new feature for restoring an InnoDB table from a backup. Now it is possible to rename the table during restore. This is useful when the user wants to restore a table from a backup without overwriting the existing version of the table in the database.

The following example illustrates how the renaming feature could be used.  Suppose that the DBA has deleted three rows from a table T1 by mistake and he now wishes to get them back from a backup. He wants to leave the database online and to restore the 3 deleted rows from a TTS backup (a backup created with the --use-tts option) that contains the table T1.  He can do this with this feature in three steps:

1. He restores with MEB the table T1 from a TTS backup renaming it to T2.
   
   
2. He uses MySQL client to issue SQL statements to …

With MySQL Enterprise Backup(MEB) 3.9.0 we had introduced full instance backup feature for cloning the MySQL server. Now with MEB 3.11.0 we have enhanced the feature by copying all the master-slave setup files like MySQL server binary logs(will be referred as 'binlogs'), binary log index files, relay logs of slave, relay log index files, master info of slave, slave info files. As part of full instance backup, copying of binlog files is default behavior MEB-3.11.0 onwards. DBA should be aware of the fact that current full instance backup is bigger than the backups with old MEB's.

As every event on MySQL production database goes as a entry to binlog files in particular format, binlog files could be huge. Backing of huge binlog and/or relaylog files should not impact the performance of MySQL server. Hence, all the binlog files, …

Introduction 

MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) is a highly efficient tool for taking backups of your MySQL databases. In the 3.11.0 release, we are taking that one step further by introducing a new concept called "optimistic" backup. Optimistic backup leverages the patterns we saw frequently especially as related to very large databases.

For backups the goals are:

1 - Quality and Consistency - the backup and more importantly the restore just "works".
2 - Size, time, and overhead - like in the game of golf - low score wins - for backups and for
     restores.
3 - Flexibility – It’s not always one size fits all - whether how the backup is run, where it goes,
     how it is recovered.

With optimistic backup - we look at mostly the read aspects of your database to enable us to create a backup that is smaller, faster to backup, faster to …

Introduction

MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) 3.10 introduces support for encrypted backups by allowing backup images, or single-file backups, to be encrypted. However, backups stored in multiple files in a backup directory can not be encrypted.

Any MEB command that produces a backup image can be optionally requested to encrypt it. The encrypted backup image can be stored in a file or tape in the same way as an unencrypted backup image. Similarly, any MEB command that reads data from a backup image accepts also an encrypted backup image. This means that encrypted backups can be used in all the same situations as unencrypted backup images.

MEB encrypts data with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm in CBC mode with 256-bit keys. AES is a symmetric block cipher which means that the same key is used both for encryption and decryption. The AES cipher has been adopted by the U.S. government and it is now used worldwide. …

MySQL Enterprise Backup(MEB) does hot backup of innodb data and log files. Till MEB 3.6.1, the user backs up the only innodb tables in a 3 step process:

STEP 1. Take backup using --only-innodb option

STEP 2. Temporarily make the table read only by executing “FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK”

STEP 3. Manually copy the .frm files of innodb tables to the destination directory where backup is stored.

MEB 3.7.0 has an enhancement to innodb file copying. The .frm files gets copied along with the hot backup done for innodb files. I would like to make the blog a little interactive by explaining the feature as answers:

1. What are these .frm files?

The files containing the metadata, such as the table definition, of a MySQL table.

For backups, the full set of .frm files are always required …