Restoring Individual Tables and Partitions with Mariabackup
Contents
When using Mariabackup, you don't necessarily need to restore every table and/or partition that was backed up. Even if you're starting from a full backup, it is certainly possible to restore only certain tables and/or partitions from the backup, as long as the table or partition involved is in an InnoDB file-per-table tablespace. This page documents how to restore individual tables and partitions.
Preparing the Backup
Before you can restore from a backup, you first need to prepare it to make the data files consistent. You can do so with the --prepare
command option.
The ability to restore individual tables and partitions relies on InnoDB's transportable tablespaces. For MariaDB to import tablespaces like these, InnoDB looks for a file with a .cfg
extension. For Mariabackup to create these files, you also need to add the --export
option during the prepare step.
For example, you might execute the following command:
$ mariabackup --prepare --export \ --target-dir=/var/mariadb/backup/ \ --user=mariabackup --password=mypassword
If this operation completes without error, then the backup is ready to be restored.
MariaDB until 10.2.8
Before MariaDB 10.2.9, Mariabackup did not support the --export
option. See MDEV-13466 about that. In earlier versions of MariaDB, this means that Mariabackup could not create .cfg
files for InnoDB file-per-table tablespaces during the --prepare
stage. You can still import file-per-table tablespaces without the .cfg
files in many cases, so it may still be possible in those versions to restore partial backups or to restore individual tables and partitions with just the .ibd
files. If you have a full backup and you need to create .cfg
files for InnoDB file-per-table tablespaces, then you can do so by preparing the backup as usual without the --export
option, and then restoring the backup, and then starting the server. At that point, you can use the server's built-in features to copy the transportable tablespaces.
Restoring the Backup
The restore process for restoring individual tables and/or partitions is quite different than the process for full backups.
Rather than using the --copy-back
or the --move-back
, each individual InnoDB file-per-table tablespace file will have to be manually imported into the target server. The process that is used to restore the backup will depend on whether partitioning is involved.
Restoring Individual Non-Partitioned Tables
To restore individual non-partitioned tables from a backup, find the .ibd
and .cfg
files for the table in the backup, and then import them using the Importing Transportable Tablespaces for Non-partitioned Tables process.
Restoring Individual Partitions and Partitioned Tables
To restore individual partitions or partitioned tables from a backup, find the .ibd
and .cfg
files for the partition(s) in the backup, and then import them using the Importing Transportable Tablespaces for Partitioned Tables process.