Understand MySQL backups
Aiven for MySQL databases are automatically backed-up, with full backups daily, and binary logs recorded continuously. The number of stored backups and backup retention time depends on your Aiven service plan. Full backups are version-specific binary backups, which when combined with binlog allow for consistent recovery to a specific point in time (PITR).
One thing to consider is that you may modify the backup time configuration option in Advanced configuration in Aiven Console which will begin shifting the backup schedule to the new time. If there was a recent backup taken, it may take another backup cycle before it starts applying new backup time.
To be able to safely make backups, MySQL INSTANT ALTER TABLE always use the INPLACE or COPY algorithm instead of INSTANT. Specifying ALGORITHM=INSTANT does not fail but automatically falls back to INPLACE or COPY as needed.
MySQL backups and encryption
All Aiven for MySQL backups use the myhoard software to perform encryption. Myhoard utilizes Percona XtraBackup internally for taking a full (or incremental) snapshot of MySQL.
Since Percona XtraBackup
8.0.23 the --lock-ddl
option is enabled by default. This ensures that DDL changes cannot be
performed while a full backup process is ongoing. This is important to
guarantee that the backup service is consistent and can be reliably used
for restoration.
With this feature enabled, if you try to run CREATE, ALTER, DROP,
TRUNCATE or another command during backup, you may receive the message
Waiting for backup lock. In this case, wait till the backup is
complete for running such operations.
More resources
- Our blog post: MyHoard, your solution to MySQL backups and restoration
- Read about Aiven cloud security and data encryption