Zmanda Documentation > Where to Backup

Where to Backup

Backup Directory

Irrespective of where the MySQL server is hosted, backups are stored under the backup directory of the local machine where ZRM for MySQL runs. Default directory used is /var/lib/mysql-zrm.

To specify a different target directory, change the parameter destination parameter in the mysql-zrm.conf configuration file. For example:

destination=/home/backups

Please refer to the backup set parameters for more details on this parameter.

Usual practice is to mount a filesystem at /var/lib/mysql-zrm. You can use local or NFS or CIFS mounted storage for storing MySQL backup data. The MySQL backup data can be migrated to other storage devices using Network based backup and recovery utilities such as Amanda

It is necessary to allocate sufficient disk space to meet the backup space needs for the MySQL databases. If sufficient disk space is not available, the backup run will fail.

Backup directory should have at least 150% of uncompressed backup space available for a successful backup run. This additional space is required even when backups are configured for compression, since the additional space is used for compression during the backup run. The additional space is freed after the backup run.

For example: Backup set "daily" requires 150GB of disk space for uncompressed backups and backup image upon compression are 100GB. The backup directory filesystem should have at least 225GB (1.5 * 150GB) for space. After backup run is completed, only 100GB of disk space will be used.

Directory For Storing Temporary Files

ZRM for MySQL creates temporary files and directories during backup. This directory should have sufficient space to hold at least one full backup on the MySQL server during backup and on the backup host during restore.

By default it will use the directory pointed to by the TMPDIR environment variable. If that is not specified, then /tmp is used. If a different directory needs to be used specify the tmpdir variable in the mysql-zrm.conf configuration file. For example

tmpdir=/backup/tmp