Here in Percona’s Training department , we like to think that we instruct our learners on the best practices for all things MySQL-related. In addition to performance tuning, query optimization, and replication configurations, another important topic is backups. Let’s dive in and discuss some of the basics and best practices around backups for MySQL. Logical MySQL Backups In MySQL, it is possible to take backups in two different forms. The first form, logical, is the most universal. Essentially, you create all of the necessary INSERT statements to repopulate your table data. The two most popular tools in the area are mysqldump and mydumper. mysqldump This tool has been around since the beginning and supports a slew of different options, too numerous to discuss in this post. Here is a simple example for taking a logical backup of the ‘members’ database, while simultaneously compressing the result. mysqldump --single-transaction members | gzip - >members.sql.gz If you wanted to