Starter and Business plans of Scalingo for MySQL® include automated and managed backups so you don’t have to worry about them.

We use Periodic backups to create the automated ones. Manual backups are also available for these plans.

Please carefully read our backup policies for details about backups retention and important considerations regarding backups.

Understanding Periodic Backups

Periodic backups are done on a daily basis. They consist in dumping your database in an archive that we keep during a certain amount of time.

For Business plans, the backup is done on the secondary node to avoid any impact on your primary node.

Configuring Periodic Backups

By default, Periodic backups are done around 1:00 AM Central European Time (CET or UTC+0100). This time can be modified.

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backup schedule block
4. Click the Schedule button
5. Make sure to check the I want to enable scheduled backups checkbox
6. Pick an hour (timezone is UTC)
7. Validate by clicking the Update button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Configure the time of backup:
   • By setting an hour:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups-config --schedule-at 3
     

     In this example, we ask the platform to create the backups at ~03:00.

     Note: The timezone used is the local timezone of the machine running the command.

   • By setting an hour and a timezone:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups-config --schedule-at "4:00 UTC"
     

     In this example, we ask the platform to create the backup at ~04:00 UTC.

   The output should look like this:

   -----> Periodic backups will be done daily at 6:00 CET
   

Downloading a Periodic Backup

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backups block
4. Locate the Periodic backup you are interested in
5. Click the corresponding Download button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Run the following command(s):
   • To download the latest backup available:

     scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups-download
     

     The output should look like this:

     -----> Selected the most recent successful backup
     139.37 KiB / 139.37 KiB [----------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
     ===> 20231207000608_my_app_4553.tar.gz
     

     The backup is downloaded in your current working directory.

   • To download a specific backup:
     1. List the backups available for this database addon:

        scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups
        

        The output should look like this:

        +--------------------------+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
        |            ID            |           CREATED AT           |  SIZE  | STATUS |
        +--------------------------+--------------------------------+--------+--------+
        | 65710b0a99c3cd23d455edee | Thu, 07 Dec 2023 01:00:10 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        | 656fb98b99c3cd23d455d4e7 | Wed, 06 Dec 2023 01:00:11 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        | 656e680a99c3cd23d455c1f0 | Tue, 05 Dec 2023 01:00:10 CET  | 143 kB | done   |
        ...
        

     2. Locate the ID of the backup you want to download
     3. Download the backup:

        scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups-download --backup <backup_ID>
        

        The output should look like this:

        79.10 KiB / 79.10 KiB [---------------------------------] 100.00% ? p/s
        ===> 20230305000044_my_app_4553.tar.gz
        

        The backup is downloaded in your current working directory.

Understanding Manual Backups

Manual backups use the exact same mechanism as Periodic backups, except that they are not automated. As the name suggests, Manual backups are triggered manually, whenever you want.

Creating a Manual Backup

Using the Database Dashboard

1. From your web browser, open your database dashboard
2. Click the Backups tab
3. Locate the Backups block
4. Click the Trigger manual backup button

Using the Command Line

1. Make sure you have correctly setup the Scalingo command line tool
2. Ask the platform to backup the database:

   scalingo --app my-app --addon mysql backups-create
   

   After a while, the output should look like this:

   -----> Backup successfully finished
   

Downloading a Manual Backup

Please refer to Downloading a Periodic Backup section, as the process is exactly the same.

Dumping the Database

There are different ways to dump (and restore) a MySQL® database. We generally advise to either:

• Process from a one-off container
• Or conduct the operations from your workstation, by accessing the database in a secured manner

From a One-Off Container

This method doesn’t require to make your database reachable over Internet.

1. Follow the procedure to access your MySQL® database from a one-off container
2. Make sure to understand the connection URI
3. Dump the database:

   mysqldump --user=<user> --password=<password> --host=<host> --port=<port> --column-statistics=0 --no-tablespaces <dbname> > dump.sql
   

   With user, password, host, port and dbname from your original connection URI.

From Your Workstation

1. Open a DB tunnel so you can access your database from your workstation
2. Make sure to understand the connection URI
3. Dump the database using the mysqldump command (you may have to install it):

   mysqldump --user=<user> --password=<password> --host=127.0.0.1 --port=<port> --column-statistics=0 --no-tablespaces <dbname> > dump.sql
   

   With user, password and dbname from your original connection URI and port depending on what you did (default is 10000)