- Administration >
- MongoDB Backup Methods
MongoDB Backup Methods¶
On this page
When deploying MongoDB in production, you should have a strategy for capturing and restoring backups in the case of data loss events.
Back Up with Atlas¶
MongoDB Atlas is a database-as-a-service that offers fully managed backups.
Back Up with MongoDB Cloud Manager or Ops Manager¶
MongoDB Cloud Manager is a hosted back up, monitoring, and automation service for MongoDB. MongoDB Cloud Manager supports backing up and restoring MongoDB replica sets and sharded clusters from a graphical user interface.
MongoDB Cloud Manager¶
The MongoDB Cloud Manager supports the backing up and restoring of MongoDB deployments.
MongoDB Cloud Manager continually backs up MongoDB replica sets and sharded clusters by reading the oplog data from your MongoDB deployment. MongoDB Cloud Manager creates snapshots of your data at set intervals, and can also offer point-in-time recovery of MongoDB replica sets and sharded clusters.
Tip
Sharded cluster snapshots are difficult to achieve with other MongoDB backup methods.
To get started with MongoDB Cloud Manager Backup, sign up for MongoDB Cloud Manager. For documentation on MongoDB Cloud Manager, see the MongoDB Cloud Manager documentation.
Ops Manager¶
With Ops Manager, MongoDB subscribers can install and run the same core software that powers MongoDB Cloud Manager on their own infrastructure. Ops Manager is an on-premise solution that has similar functionality to MongoDB Cloud Manager and is available with Enterprise Advanced subscriptions.
For more information about Ops Manager, see the MongoDB Enterprise Advanced page and the Ops Manager Manual.
Back Up by Copying Underlying Data Files¶
Back Up with Filesystem Snapshots¶
You can create a backup of a MongoDB deployment by making a copy of MongoDB’s underlying data files.
If the volume where MongoDB stores its data files supports point-in-time snapshots, you can use these snapshots to create backups of a MongoDB system at an exact moment in time. File system snapshots are an operating system volume manager feature, and are not specific to MongoDB. With file system snapshots, the operating system takes a snapshot of the volume to use as a baseline for data backup. The mechanics of snapshots depend on the underlying storage system. For example, on Linux, the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) can create snapshots. Similarly, Amazon’s EBS storage system for EC2 supports snapshots.
To get a correct snapshot of a running mongod process, you
must have journaling enabled and the journal must reside on the same
logical volume as the other MongoDB data files. Without journaling
enabled, there is no guarantee that the snapshot will be consistent or
valid.
To get a consistent snapshot of a sharded cluster, you must disable the balancer and capture a snapshot from every shard as well as a config server at approximately the same moment in time.
For more information, see the Back Up and Restore with Filesystem Snapshots and Back Up a Sharded Cluster with File System Snapshots for complete instructions on using LVM to create snapshots. Also see Back up and Restore Processes for MongoDB on Amazon EC2.
Back Up with cp or rsync¶
If your storage system does not support snapshots, you can copy the
files directly using cp, rsync, or a similar tool. Since
copying multiple files is not an atomic operation, you must stop all
writes to the mongod before copying the files. Otherwise, you will
copy the files in an invalid state.
Backups produced by copying the underlying data do not support point
in time recovery for replica sets and are difficult to manage for
larger sharded clusters. Additionally, these backups are larger
because they include the indexes and duplicate underlying storage
padding and fragmentation. mongodump, by contrast, creates
smaller backups.
Back Up with mongodump¶
mongodump reads data from a MongoDB database and
creates high fidelity BSON files which the mongorestore
tool can use to populate a MongoDB database.
mongodump and mongorestore are simple and
efficient tools for backing up and restoring small
MongoDB deployments, but are not ideal for capturing backups of larger
systems.
mongodump and mongorestore operate against a
running mongod process, and can manipulate the underlying
data files directly. By default, mongodump does not
capture the contents of the local database.
mongodump only captures the documents in the database. The
resulting backup is space efficient, but mongorestore or
mongod must rebuild the indexes after restoring data.
When connected to a MongoDB instance, mongodump can
adversely affect mongod performance. If your data is larger
than system memory, the queries will push the working set out of
memory, causing page faults.
Applications can continue to modify data while mongodump
captures the output. For replica sets, mongodump provides
the --oplog option to include in its
output oplog entries that occur during the mongodump
operation. This allows the corresponding mongorestore
operation to replay the captured oplog. To restore a backup created
with --oplog, use mongorestore
with the --oplogReplay option.
However, for replica sets, consider MongoDB Cloud Manager or Ops Manager.
See Back Up and Restore with MongoDB Tools and Back Up a Sharded Cluster with Database Dumps for more information.