It is quite a common occurrence for enterprise backups to use databases for information storage purposes – due to the sheer amount of data circulating within the organization on a regular basis, in all shapes, forms, and formats.
As such, it is not particularly surprising when a database management system as popular as MySQL is used within larger companies.
MySQL as a whole can offer an impressive number of advantages when applied correctly, and the combination of its open-source nature and the GNU General Public License distribution makes it relatively easy to both use and modify.
However, it would be fair to mention that the basic free version of MySQL has a rather large entry threshold in terms of knowledge – and this threshold is even higher when it comes to applying MySQL for enterprise-level databases.
At this point, it is a requirement to have in-depth knowledge about MySQL and its systems to operate it in the first place.
It would be rather inconvenient to use in its free form, which is why there are many premium enterprise-level MySQL solutions on the market – including the one provided by MySQL themselves.
MySQL Enterprise Backup is a highly versatile backup solution for MySQL databases, included in both MySQL Enterprise Edition and MySQL Cluster CGE ($5,000 and $10,000 per year, respectively).
MySQL Enterprise Backup offers a high-performance backup system with fast recovery times, multiple backup target locations, and is supported by the majority of modern platforms.
The remaining feature list includes different backup types, data encryption, data compression, and more. All in all, it is a great option for many different use cases, but it’s also not the only alternative on the market, either.
The two examples we are presenting here are Percona XtraBackup and Bacula Enterprise. The former is a free MySQL backup solution, while the latter is a premium third-party backup solution with MySQL support.
Percona XtraBackup is a free open-source backup solution for MySQL databases that offers a lot of the same features as MySQL Enterprise Backup does, as well as several exclusive features, such as parallel compressed backups, MariaDB and Percona Server database support, and more.
Bacula Enterprise is a multifunctional backup and recovery solution that provides many features and supports a lot of different target locations with its module system.
One such module exists for Bacula Enterprise to work with MySQL databases, offering a user-friendly interface, as well as the majority of classic MySQL Enterprise Backup features – backup compression, data deduplication, “hot” backups, etc.
You can learn more about different MySQL enterprise backup solutions in this blog post about this particular topic. Meanwhile, there’s a slightly different topic that also concerns Bacula Enterprise – and that is NDMP backup software support.
NDMP is a data management protocol, mainly used to transfer data between backup storage locations and network-attached storage (NAS).
This particular protocol is an industry standard that managed to completely eliminate the need to use the server’s resources to transfer said data in the first place – and NAS are used quite frequently when it comes to enterprise or large companies, in general.
The integration of NDMP with various enterprise-level backup solutions (like Bacula Enterprise, for example) helps a lot with streamlining the entire backup process and offers multiple advantages, such as:
- Improved performance when compared with traditional backup methods.
- Different types of backups.
- More customization to a backup strategy, as a whole.
- A host of additional features, including data deduplication, granular restoration, and so on.
Bacula’s variation of NDMP backup also offers support for multiple backup targets, including disk, cloud, and tape, offering much-needed flexibility to all kinds of enterprises.
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