>DJ> Has anyone out there figured out a good way to do database backups
without
>DJ> shutting down the database? We are starting a 24 X 7 (international)
>DJ> service and are trying to figure out the best way to backups without
>
>It depends on what your backups are for. Are they for archival
>purposes or are they for emergency recovery?
>
>If they are for archival purposes, then you probably will need to turn
>off the updates and make your copy, otherwise you'll end up with an
>inconsistent set of data, potentially.
>
>If your backups are for emergency recovery, then you really should
>consider putting your data on a RAID of some sort. Exactly which type
>of RAID to use depends on your budget and performance and safety
>requirements. Seeing as how you have a 24x7 operation going (don't we
>all these days?) this is probably the way to go for you.
Another alternative would be to write a small C program that would emulate
what mysqldump does, but lock the table in question, dump the data record,
then undo the lock and sleep for X milliseconds, to allow the database to
have access to the table the majority of the time. Another alternative
would be to hack mysqldump to do the same thing.
As for the potential to lose data consistency, see section 5.4 of the manual
for a related discussion on record locking and commit-rollback. Sections
7.23 and 10.10 talk about table locking.
