Devise a back-up strategy for server data

[kristian-lange]

There is no backup of the data. A backup plan, in an accessible format, is needed. We also need to change the server for a more recent computer.

[kristian-lange]

Simple dump:

mysqldump -u ommuser -p omm > omm_backup.sql

Might need --no-tablespaces because of missing privilege:

mysqldump -u ommuser -p omm --no-tablespaces > omm_backup.sql

With a timestamp in the dump filename:

mysqldump -u ommuser -p omm --no-tablespaces > $(date +omm_db_backup_%Y%m%d%H%M.sql)

To do the dump remotely from a different host one can use ssh (needs MySQL user's password in the command):

ssh my_user@omm_host "mysqldump -u ommuser -pxxx omm --no-tablespaces" > $(date +omm_db_backup_%Y%m%d%H%M.sql)

To save bandwidth and disk space one can zip the dump data:

ssh my_user@omm_host "mysqldump -u ommuser -pxxx omm --no-tablespaces | gzip -9" > $(date +omm_db_backup_%Y%m%d%H%M.sql.gz)

To do this regularly do the command in a cron job (add with crontab -e):

0 0 * * * ssh my_user@omm_host "mysqldump -u ommuser -pxxx omm --no-tablespaces | gzip -9" > /path/to/backups/$(date +omm_db_backup_\%Y\%m\%d\%H\%M.sql.gz)

All together this command does a dump of your OMM database regularly, ZIP-packed, without overwriting, and stores them on a remote host.

Since, over time, those dumps can take up a large amount of disk space an additional cron job could clean up old dump files (e.g. delete all dump files older than x days).