Zmanda Recovery Manager 3.0 for MySQL on Ubuntu Server

Responding to growing demand for a professional level backup and recovery solution, Zmanda, a leading vendor for open source backup solutions, has introduced an Ubuntu server version of their Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL.

At LinuxWorld 2008 in San Francisco, 451 Group analyst Jay Lyman observed that Ubuntu will continue to gain acceptance in the enterprise as organizations increasingly use free, community-driven Linux distributions and grow their own in-house Linux expertise. As a bellwether example, Wikipedia has switched its 400 servers to Ubuntu.

MySQL is equally gaining in importance to the enterprise. This same Wikipedia is also powered by MySQL. Acquired by Sun in late 2007, MySQL has been propelled further and further into the big leagues. As larger enterprises adopt Ubuntu together with MySQL, the need for a robust, well integrated database backup solution only grows.

To meet the widest possible range of backup solution requirements, Zmanda offers three versions of ZRM for MySQL on Ubuntu: the ZRM Enterprise edition, the ZRM Cluster edition and a ZRM Community edition. In this article, we’ll take a tour of the features in the latest release of ZRM Enterprise edition 3.0 for Ubuntu Server. We’ll focus on the product’s core capabilities for database backup and recovery and then we’ll look at some new features — application configuration backup, full-text search in ZRM’s management console (ZMC) and support for 64-bit platforms.

What is Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM)

ZRM Enterprise edition 3.0 brings a feature-complete backup and recovery solution for MySQL databases to Ubuntu Server. In this section, we look at the major components of ZRM and then survey the most important product features. We’ll also describe the support options available for ZRM.

ZRM Enterprise edition 3.0 includes the following three components: Zmanda Management Console, a command line interface and a plugin framework.

Figure 1: ZMC Login screen

Zmanda Management Console (ZMC) — ZMC is a web-based console that provides an easy to use GUI wizard for essential backup and recovery tasks. ZMC controls reporting and monitoring for all tasks in ZRM. An interface with Zmanda Network enables easy access to the latest product documentation and context-sensitive help.

Core functions such as “Backup”, “Monitor”, “Report”, “Admin”, and “Restore” are presented as a tabbed interface in ZMC. The Backup and Restore tabs break down the respective processes into individual screens. For example, in the Backup tab you’ll see links for each step of the backup process labeled “what”, “where”, “when”, “how”, “summary”, respectively. As the user navigates through each screen, they fill in the necessary information and proceed to schedule or run the backup. Similarly, in the Restore tab, links for “what”, “where”, “how”, and “restore” are displayed at the top. The user navigates each screen to complete the recovery process. The other tabs — “Monitor”, “Report”, “Admin” — follow the same pattern, with links for related tasks under each tab.

Context-sensitive help is available throughout the ZMC by clicking on the question mark icon at the top left corner of each screen. Also, common error messages are hyperlinked to the Zmanda Network knowledge base, where you can find detailed information about the error message and how to resolve it.

Command Line Interface (CLI) — The CLI provides an alternate scriptable interface to the major functionality of ZRM. Using the CLI tools, ZRM can be integrated with existing backup and recovery systems.

Plugin Framework — ZRM’s capabilities can be extended with plugins. Pre-backup and post-backup plugins execute custom tasks before or after backup jobs. Copy plugins are used to specify the data transfer mechanism (e.g., ssh, socket) between the ZRM backup server and remote MySQL server. Filesystem snaphot plugins support NetApp SnapManager, Solaris ZFS and Veritas VxFS. Also, storage volume snapshot plugins support Linux LVM, Windows VSS, and EMC CLARiiON SnapView. Note that plugins for NetApp SnapManager, Veritas VxFS and EMC CLARiiON SnapView must be purchased separately. Other plugins are available for dynamic rescheduling of backups and binary log parsing.

Core Features

ZRM’s core features are database backup and recovery, monitoring, and running pre-defined and custom reports.

Backup

ZRM is a flexible platform that lets you to backup multiple databases and tables from one or more MySQL servers.

ZRM offers a variety of options for scheduling backups. You can schedule backups during planned downtime or run instantaneous hot backups without taking your MySQL server offline. You can request daily, weekly, and monthly backups from the “Backup Schedule” panel under the “Backup / When” screen of the ZMC. It is also possible to schedule hourly backups by defining multiple daily jobs. Once defined, backup schedules can be modified as needed, for example, to avoid database peak usage periods by postponing a backup job using the pre-scheduler plugin.

ZRM handles multiple storage engines including MyISAM, InnoDB, NDB, Archive, and Falcon. Depending on the storage engine being used by your database table, ZRM automatically selects the appropriate backup method. If you are using the InnoDB hotbackup tool from Oracle, ZRM provides seamless integration with a management console for the tool. ZRM has been tested with MySQL versions 4.1.x and 5.x. To support legacy database installations, ZRM can also work with MySQL 4.0.

For large databases you may want to use ZRM’s raw backup feature. Raw or physical backups are exact copies of your data. This shortens the time needed for backups as well as for restores. Calculating storage requirements ahead of time is easier since raw backups are just a copy of your database files. However, the major drawback of raw backups is that they can only be restored to the identical MySQL server version and machine architecture used to produce the original backup.

ZRM takes advantage of filesystem and storage volume snapshots when performing raw backups. Snapshots capture changes to your data at a given point in time without having to copy the entire filesystem or volume. As noted in the Plugin Framework section above, ZRM supports filesystem snapshots for NetApp SnapManager, Solaris ZFS, Veritas VxFS, as well as storage volume snapshots for Linux LVM, Windows VSS, and EMC CLARiiON SnapView.

Logical backups should be considered if you need to support multiple machine architectures and your data must be highly portable. Logical backups offer table level granularity and can be performed without taking the MySQL server offline. However, logical backups are slower because MySQL server must fetch the database structure and content and then convert the data into a logical format, usually a text file with SQL statements. Due to the conversion, storage requirements for logical backups may be larger than the size of the original data source. To offset the conversion overhead, ZRM can be configured to compress, using gzip or other compression tools, the backup images produced.

ZRM supports full and incremental backups. Full backups save a complete copy of your database or table, whereas incremental backups save only the changes since the last full or incremental backup.

Many MySQL-backed applications depend on custom configuration files. ZRM can back up these files along with application data stored in the database for quick recovery of the entire application. Examples of such applications include Wordpress, SugarCRM, and MediaWiki. In ZRM 3.0, this feature is available by manually editing the ZRM backup set configuration file mysql-zrm.conf.

To protect sensitive data, ZRM can perform secure backups of remote MySQL servers by using standard SSL encryption over-the-wire as well as by using on-disk GPG encryption. ZRM ensures backup integrity with checksums of the backup image.

Recovery

ZRM provides continuous data protection (CDP) by integrating filesystem snapshots as well as by tracking MySQL database binary logs. CDP backup captures all changes to your data to enable fast, point-in-time data recovery. ZMC performs point-in-time recovery using selective incremental restores derived from MySQL binary log positions. Alternatively, the user can specify a recovery point (e.g., 2008-12-23 11:15:32) via the “Restore” tab of the ZMC.

ZRM offers a fine granularity of control over data recovery ranging from the entire MySQL server, database, table, down to individual transactions.

The ZMC Visual Log Analyzer (DB events viewer) parses MySQL binary logs to drive an easy-to-use GUI for browsing the contents of incremental backups, identifying recovery points (e.g., specific transactions), and monitoring operational and security aspects of your database. Starting with ZRM 3.0, the keyword search feature in Visual Log Analyzer takes advantage of MySQL full-text searching to provide accurate results more quickly.

Reporting

ZRM offers a diverse range of reports to help you stay informed about the status of your backup and recovery jobs. Automated reports generated after each backup job summarize the status of the job with useful information such as backup type (e.g., logical or raw), backup level (e.g., full or incremental), performance statistics, and backup image location. If configured, ZRM will send backup reports via email in HTML or text format. Backup reports available via RSS can be used to show backup status within other applications. In addition to automated backup summary reports, multiple pre-defined reports provide commonly requested information about backup jobs. Each pre-defined report can be customized with over 30 backup and MySQL data fields to display information specific to your needs.

Product Support Options

Zmanda provides three levels of support (Basic, Standard, and Premium) for ZRM Enterprise edition customers. All support levels come with access to the Zmanda Network resources, security updates and feature upgrades, and with web-based technical support. Standard and Premium support levels offer telephone technical support with unlimited support incidents. Premium support adds 24×7 technical support and guarantees a 3-hour incident support response time. Annual support pricing is based on the number of MySQL server instances being handled by ZRM.

Conclusion

ZRM 3.0 for MySQL on Ubuntu brings a polished, easy-to-use and full-featured, professional backup and recovery solution to Ubuntu, today’s most popular Linux distribution.

The Web-based management console lets you schedule and control backup and recovery tasks from the comfort of your favorite browser. There’s also a command line if you need it. Plugins let you extend ZRM. All the major MySQL storage engines are supported. There are also high performance options available, like raw backups and file system snapshots. Other features let you back up your application’s configuration files along with the databases it uses.

More advanced recovery facilities include CDP and fine grained, transaction level data recovery which can be initiated by an easy-to-use GUI log analyzer and events viewer. Details about backup and recovery jobs are easily tracked through pre-defined and ad-hoc reports. Finally, ZRM is bundled with a variety of customer assistance options ranging from Web to e-mail to telephone support.

With the release of ZRM 3.0, Zmanda provides features and support that meet the increasing needs of the enterprise for professional backup and recovery of MySQL on Ubuntu.

Resources

1. Zmanda Recovery Manager (http://zmanda.com/backup-mysql.html)
2. ZRM Wiki (http://mysqlbackup.zmanda.com/)