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Percona Software for MongoDB Documentation

Make a logical backup

Before you start

  1. Install and set up Percona Backup for MongoDB
  2. Check that pbm agent is running with the pbm status command

  3. Check that all pbm-agents and PBM CLI have the same version. Otherwise we cannot guarantee successful backups and data consistency in them.

    To check the version, run the following commands:

Procedure

Warning

Sharded time series collections are not supported. If you use them in your deployment, you won’t be able to make a backup.

To make a backup, run the following command:

$ pbm backup --type=logical

Logical backup is the default one so you can bypass the --type flag.

During logical backups, Percona Backup for MongoDB copies the actual data to the backup storage.

Starting with version 2.0.0, Percona Backup for MongoDB stores data in the new multi-file format where each collection has a separate file. The oplog is stored for all namespaces regardless whether this is a full or selective backup.

Multi-format is now the default data format since it allows selective restore. Note, however, that you can make only full restores from backups made with earlier versions of Percona Backup for MongoDB.

Version added: 1.7.0

$ pbm backup --type=physical

During a physical backup, Percona Backup for MongoDB copies the contents of the dbpath directory (data and metadata files, indexes, journal and logs) from every shard and config server replica set to the backup storage.

Warning

During the period the backup cursor is open, database checkpoints can be created, but no checkpoints can be deleted. This may result in significant file growth.

Starting with 2.4.0, PBM doesn’t stop point-in-time recovery oplog slicing, if it’s enabled, but runs it in parallel. This ensures point-in-time recovery to any timestamp if it takes too long (e.g. hours) to make a backup snapshot.

Version added: 2.0.0

Before you start, read about selective backups known limitations.

To make a selective backup, run the pbm backup command and provide the value for the --ns flag in the format <database.collection>. The --ns flag value is case sensitive. For example, to back up the “Payments” collection, run the following command:

$ pbm backup --ns=staff.Payments

To back up the “Invoices” database and all collections that it includes, run the pbm backup command as follows:

$ pbm backup --ns=Invoices.*

During the backup process, Percona Backup for MongoDB stores data in the new multi-file format where each collection has a separate file. The oplog is stored for all namespaces regardless whether this is a full or selective backup.

Multi-format is now the default data format for both full and selective backups since it allows selective restore. Note, however, that you can make only full restores from backups made with earlier versions of Percona Backup for MongoDB.

Version added: 2.0.3

Before you start, read more about incremental backup.

To start incremental backups, first make a full incremental backup. It will serve as the base for subsequent incremental backups:

$ pbm backup --type incremental --base

The pbm-agent starts tracking the incremental backup history to be able to calculate and save the difference in data blocks. After that you can run regular incremental backups:

$ pbm backup --type incremental

The incremental backup history looks like this:

Sample output 
Snapshots:
    2022-11-25T14:13:43Z 139.82MB <incremental> [restore_to_time: 2022-11-25T14:13:45Z]
    2022-11-25T14:02:07Z 255.20MB <incremental> [restore_to_time: 2022-11-25T14:02:09Z]
    2022-11-25T14:00:22Z 228.30GB <incremental> [restore_to_time: 2022-11-25T14:00:24Z]
    2022-11-24T14:45:53Z 220.13GB <incremental, base> [restore_to_time: 2022-11-24T14:45:55Z]

See snapshot-based backups.

Next steps

List backups Make a restore

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Last update: November 1, 2024
Created: November 1, 2024