website shows unavailable while taking DB backup? - mysql

My website is created using Drupal 7 on one instance of amazon & database is on amazon RDS . whenever i am taking backup of database using Mysql with root user & simultaneously when a developer try to clear the cache on the website that time website goes offline untill backup gets over say for around 30 min this happens everytime . what is the solution to avoid this problem.

Try to use this parameter when taking backup with mysqldump . --lock-tables for MyISAM storage engine. --single-transaction for Innodb storage engine.
--lock-tables Lock all tables before dumping them. The tables are locked with READ LOCAL to allow concurrent inserts in the case of MyISAM tables.
For transactional tables such as InnoDB and BDB, --single-transaction is a much better option, because it does not need to lock the tables at all.--single-transaction produces a checkpoint that allows the dump to capture all data prior to the checkpoint while receiving incoming changes. Those incoming changes do not become part of the dump. That ensures the same point-in-time for all tables.

You could create a read replica and perform the mysqldump against the replica, to keep the load off the main server. https://aws.amazon.com/rds/details/read-replicas/

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AWS RDS - automatic backup vs snapshot with MyISAM tables

I have an AWS RDS MySQL 5.7 database with MyISAM tables that I would like to migrate to another RDS in a custom VPC, and once migrated, convert those MyISAM tables to InnoDB.
If I undertood correctly, the only way to create a correct automatic backup is using the following procedure explained here: "Automated Backups with Unsupported MySQL Storage Engines"
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_WorkingWithAutomatedBackups.html#Overview.BackupDeviceRestrictions
Stop all activity to your MyISAM tables (that is, close all sessions).
You can close all sessions by calling the mysql.rds_kill command for each process that is returned from the SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST command.
Lock and flush each of your MyISAM tables
Create a snapshot of your DB instance. When the snapshot has completed, release the locks and resume activity on the MyISAM tables
Has someone done this procedure before?
How is that the snapshots are being created successfully every night from the current RDS DBInstance, even though it contains MyISAM tables?
Thanks!
The problem isn't with snapshot creation. It's what can go wrong when you actually try to use one of the snapshots.
RDS snapshots work by capturing a snapshot if your RDS instance's underlying EBS volume (you can't see this volume, but it's there -- RDS runs on EC2, with "hidden" instances and volumes).
EBS snapshots capture the entire contents of the hard drive exactly as they happened to exist at the moment in time when the snapshot process starts.
What ends up on the snapshot is essentially the same thing that you would have on a MySQL Server if you executed sudo killall -9 mysqld -- it is as if the server had halted everything, immediately, without doing any of the things it normally does to clean up for a graceful shutdown. With RDS, things are not quite that dramatic, because RDS does take some precautions, but fundamentally, this is the nature of what is happening.
When you create an RDS instance from a snapshot, the first thing that happens when the instance starts up is the same thing your hypothetical server would do when you restarted the killed MySQL Server daemon: InnoDB Crash Recovery.
InnoDB Crash Recovery
To recover from a MySQL server crash, the only requirement is to restart the MySQL server. InnoDB automatically checks the logs and performs a roll-forward of the database to the present. InnoDB automatically rolls back uncommitted transactions that were present at the time of the crash.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-recovery.html#innodb-crash-recovery
Crash recovery is InnoDB's mechanism for bringing everything back into harmony in it internal data structures and ensure that all data is intact, exactly as your application left it. It's possible because InnoDB is a transactional storage engine. That means a lot of different things, but what it specifically means in this case is that InnoDB doesn't just change table data when you change a table. It goes through a process that can be simplified something like this:
store the proposed changes to disk¹
actually make the changes
mark the changes as complete
What this means is that until the changes are finalized, InnoDB can be interrupted and will subsequently be able to pick up where it left off, without corrupting or losing data.
MyISAM has no such mechanisms. It just writes to the data files, directly. Even if a MyISAM table isn't actively being used, it may still need to be repaired when the server comes up, to clean up its structures. In some circumstances, repairing the table can be impossible, and all or part of the data in the table will be lost.
If your MyISAM tables are flushed and locked when the snapshot occurs, they are in a quiescent state on the disk, as though the server had actually been gracefully shut down before the snapshot had occurred, so they will be stable on the snapshot.
But the snapshot process will always appear to succeed, because the snapshot is just duplicating whatever is on the disk, as it appears at the moment in time when the snapshot gets underway.
The problem is that what the snapshot captured may not be usable, and you have no way of knowing whether the snapshot will be fully viable.
¹ Note that the first step, "store the proposed changes to disk" is related to the system variable innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit which makes the system slower if set to 1 but also is the safest setting, because your query doesn't actually succeed until that first step is done. A setting of 2 is still reasonably safe, because it still writes the changes but continues without requiring that the operating system confirm that they have actually been written to the hard drive before your query returns success... but in a crash, a transaction your application thinks was committed may or may not have survived.

Moving of large MySQL database from limited resource server

I have a Windows Server with MySQL Database Server installed.
Multiple databases exist among them, database A contains a huge table named 'tlog', size about 220gb.
I would like to move over database A to another server for backup purposes.
I know I can do SQL Dump or use MySQL Workbench/SQLyog to do table copy.
But due to limited disk storage in server (less than 50gb) SQL Dump is not possible.
The server is serving other works so basically the CPU & RAM is limited too. As a result, copy table without used up CPU & RAM is not possible.
Is there any other method that can do the moving of the huge database A over to another server please?
Thanks in advance.
You have a few ways:
Method 1
Dump and compress at the same time: mysqldump ... | gzip > blah.sql.gz
This method is good because chances are your database will be less than 50GB; as the database dump should be in ASCII; you're then compressing it on the fly.
Method 2
You can use slave replication; this method will require a dump of the data.
Method 3
You can also use xtrabackup.
Method 4
You can shutdown the database, and rsync the data directory.
Note: You don't actually have to shutdown the database; you can however do multiple rsyncs; and eventually nothing will change (unlikely if the database is busy; have to do during slow time); which means the database would have sync'd over.
I've had to do this method with fairly large PostgreSQL databases (1TB+). It takes a few rsyncs: but, hey; it's the cost of 0 down time.
Method 5
If you're in a virtual environment you could:
Clone the disk image.
If you're in AWS you could create an AMI.
You could add another disk and just sync locally; then detach the disk, and re-attach to the new VM.
If you're worried about consuming resources during the dump or transfer you can use ionice and renice to limit the priority of the dump/transfer.

moving InnoDb DB

I have DB InnoDb innodb_db_1. I have turned on innodb_file_per_table.
If I go to var/lib/mysql/innodb_db_1/ I will find files table_name.ibd, table_name.frm, db.opt.
Now, I'm trying to copy these files to another DB for example to innodb_db_2(var/lib/mysql/innodb_db_2/) but nothing happened.
But if my DB will be MyIsam, I can copy in such way and everything be ok.
What suggestions to move the DB by copying the file of InnoDb DB?
Even when you use file-per-table, the tables keep some of their data and metadata in /var/lib/mysql/ibdata1. So you can't just move .ibd files to a new MySQL instance.
You'll have to backup and restore your database. You can use:
mysqldump, included with MySQL, reliable but slow.
mydumper, a community contributed substitute for mysqldump, this supports compression and parallel execution and other neat features.
Percona XtraBackup, which is free and performs high-speed physical backups of InnoDB (and also supports other storage engines). This is recommended to minimize interruption to your live operations, and also if your database is large.
Re your comment:
No, you cannot just copy .ibd files. You cannot turn off the requirement for ibdata1. This file includes, among other things, a data dictionary which you can think of like a table of contents for a book. It tells InnoDB what tables you have, and which physical file they reside in.
If you just move a .ibd file into another MySQL instance, this does not add it to that instance's data dictionary. So InnoDB has no idea to look in the new file, or which logical table it goes with.
If you want a workaround, you could ALTER TABLE mytable ENGINE=MyISAM, move that file and its .frm to another instance, and then ALTER TABLE mytable ENGINE=InnoDB to change it back. Remember to FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK before you move MyISAM files.
But these steps are not for beginners. It would be a lot safer for you to use the backup & restore method unless you know what you're doing. I'm trying to save you some grief.
There is an easy procedure to move the whole Mysql InnoDB from pc A to pc B.
The conditions to perform the procedure are:
You need to have innodb_file_per_table option set
You need to be able to make a shutdown of the database
In my case i had to move whole 150Gb MySql database (the biggest table had aprox. 60Gb). Making sqldumps and loading them back was not an option (too slow).
So what I did was I made a "cold backup" of the mysql database (mysql doc) and then simply move files to another computer.
The steps to make after moving the databse are described here dba stackexchange.
I am writing this, because (assuming you are able to follow mentioned conditions) this is by far the fastest (and probalby the easiest) method to move a (large) MySql InnoDb and nobody mentioned it yet.
You can copy MyISAM tables all day long (safely, as long as they are flushed and locked or the server is stopped) but you can't do this with InnoDB, because the two storage engines handle tables and tablespaces very differently.
MyISAM automatically discovers tables by iterating the files in the directory named for the database.
InnoDB has an internal data dictionary stored in the system tablespace (ibdata1). Not only do the tables have to be consistent, there are identifiers in the .ibd files that must match what the data dictionary has stored internally.
Prior to MySQL 5.6, with the introduction of transportable tablespaces, this wasn't a supported operation. If you are using MySQL 5.6, the link provides you with information on how this works.
The alternatives:
use mysqldump [options] database_name > dumpfile.sql without the --databases option, which will dump the tables in the specified database but will omit any DATABASE commands (DROP DATABASE, CREATE DATABASE and USE), some or all of which, based on the combination of options specified, are normally added to the dump file. You can then import this with mysql [options] < dumpfile.sql.
CREATE TABLE db2.t1 LIKE db1.t1; INSERT INTO db2.t1 SELECT * FROM db1.t1; (for each table; you'll have to add any foreign key constraints back in)
ALTER TABLE on each table, changing it to MyISAM, then flushing and locking the tables with FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;, copying them over, then altering everything back to InnoDB. Not the greatest idea, since you'll lose all foreign key declarations and have to add them back on the original tables, but it is an alternative.
As far as I know, "hot copying" table files is a very bad idea (I've done it two times, and only made it work with MyISAM tables, and i did it only because I had no other choice).
My personal recomendation is: Use mysqldump. On your shell:
mysqldump -h yourHost -u yourUser -pYourPassword yourDatabase yourTable > dumpFile.sql
To copy the data from a dump file to another database, on your shell:
mysql -h yourHost -u yourUser -pYourPassword yourNewDatabase < dumpFile.sql
Check: mysqldump — A Database Backup Program.
If you insist on copying InnoDB files by hand, please read this: Backing Up and Recovering an InnoDB Database

Big Database backup best practice

I maintain big MySQL database. I need to backup it every night, but the DB is active all the time. There are queries from users.
Now I just disable the website and then do a backup, but this is very bad as the service is disabled and users don't like this.
What is a good way to backup the data if data is changed during the backup?
What is best practice for this?
I've implemented this scheme using a read-only replication slave of my database server.
MySQL Database Replication is pretty easy to set up and monitor. You can set it up to get all changes made to your production database, then take it off-line nightly to make a backup.
The Replication Slave server can be brought up as read-only to ensure that no changes can be made to it directly.
There are other ways of doing this that don't require the replication slave, but in my experience that was a pretty solid way of solving this problem.
Here's a link to the docs on MySQL Replication.
If you have a really large (50G+ like me) MySQL MyISAM only databases, you can use locks and rsync. According to MySQL documentation you can safely copy raw files while read lock is active and you cannot do it with InnoDB.
So if the goal is zero downtime and you have extra HD space, create a script:
rsync -aP --delete /var/lib/mysql/* /tmp/mysql/sync
Then do the following:
Do flush tables
Run script
Do flush tables with read lock;
Run script again
Do unlock tables;
On first run rsync will copy a lot without stopping MySQL. The second run will be very short, it will only delay write queries, so it is a real zero downtime solution.
Do another rsync from /tmp/mysql/sync to a remote server, compress, keep incremental versions, anything you like.
This partly depends upon whether you use innodb or myiasm. For innodb; mySQL have their own (which costs money) solution for this (innodb hot copy) but there is an open source version from Percona you may want to look at:
http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/
What you want to do is called "online backup". Here's a pointer to a matrix of possible options with more information:
http://www.zmanda.com/blogs/?p=19
It essentially boils down to the storage backend that you are using and how much hardware you have available.

mysqldump | mysql yields 'too many open files' error. Why?

I have a RHEL 5 system with a fresh new hard drive I just dedicated to the MySQL server. To get things started, I used "mysqldump --host otherhost -A | mysql", even though I noticed the manpage never explicitly recommends trying this (mysqldump into a file is a no-go. We're talking 500G of database).
This process fails at random intervals, complaining that too many files are open (at which point mysqld gets the relevant signal, and dies and respawns).
I tried upping it at sysctl and ulimit, but the problem persists. What do I do about it?
mysqldump by default performs a per-table lock of all involved tables. If you have many tables that can exceed the amount of file descriptors of the mysql server process.
Try --skip-lock-tables or if locking is imperative --lock-all-tables.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html--lock-all-tables, -x
Lock all tables across all databases. This is achieved by acquiring a global read lock for the duration of the whole dump. This option automatically turns off --single-transaction and --lock-tables.
mysqldump has been reported to yeld that error for larger databases (1, 2, 3). Explanation and workaround from MySQL Bugs:
[3 Feb 2007 22:00] Sergei Golubchik
This is not really a bug.
mysqldump by default has --lock-tables enabled, which means it tries to lock all tables to
be dumped before starting the dump. And doing LOCK TABLES t1, t2, ... for really big
number of tables will inevitably exhaust all available file descriptors, as LOCK needs all
tables to be opened.
Workarounds: --skip-lock-tables will disable such a locking completely. Alternatively,
--lock-all-tables will make mysqldump to use FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK which locks all
tables in all databases (without opening them). In this case mysqldump will automatically
disable --lock-tables because it makes no sense when --lock-all-tables is used.
Edit: Please check Dave's workaround for InnoDB in the comment below.
If your database is that large you've got a few issues.
You have to lock the tables to dump the data.
mysqldump will take a very very long time and your tables will need to locked during this time.
importing the data on the new server will also take a long time.
Since your database is going to be essentially unusable while #1 and #2 are happening I would actually recommend stopping the database and using rsync to copy the files to the other server. It's faster than using mysqldump and much faster than importing because you don't have the added IO and CPU of generating indexes.
In production environments on Linux many people put Mysql data on an LVM partition. Then they stop the database, do an LVM snapshot, start the database, and copy off the state of the stopped database at their leisure.
I just restarted the "MySql" Server and then I could use the mysqldump command flawlessly.
Thought this might be helpful tip here.