Percona XtraBackup is a tool from Percona that can be used to create physical backups. Its most important feature is that it operates while the server is running and requires no lock at all for InnoDB tables. Tables that use other storage engines only require a lock at the end of the copy. Percona XtraBackup supports incremental backups. Percona XtraBackup is available on the Percona website.

Percona XtraBackup consists of several components. The core component is the xtrabackup program. It embeds a modified version of InnoDB that is used to access the InnoDB tablespaces. The user usually does not invoke it directly. A Perl script called innobackupex performs the backup of other storage engines, table definition files, and triggers, and calls xtrabackup to back up the .ibd files. Percona XtraBackup is a complex tool. The xbcrypt command is a standalone tool that encrypts or decrypts backup files. In this book, we will only cover a general explanation of how to use innobackupex...