Docs Menu
Docs Home
/
MongoDB Manual
/ / / /

Back Up a Self-Managed Sharded Cluster with a Database Dump

On this page

  • About this Task
  • Before you Begin
  • Steps
  • Next Steps

Starting in MongoDB 7.1 (also available starting in 7.0.2, 6.0.11, and 5.0.22), you can back up data on sharded clusters using mongodump.

mongodump is a utility that creates a binary export of database content. You can use the mongodump utility to take self-managed backups of a sharded cluster.

To back up a sharded cluster with mongodump, you must stop the balancer, stop writes, and stop any schema transformation operations on the cluster. This helps reduce the likelihood of inconsistencies in the backup.

MongoDB provides backup and restore operations that can run with the balancer and running transactions through the following services:

This task uses mongodump to back up a sharded cluster. Ensure that you have a cluster running that contains data in sharded collections.

This procedure requires a version of MongoDB that supports fsync locking from mongos.

Starting in MongoDB 6.0.11 (also available starting in 5.0.22) the fsync and fsyncUnlock commands can run on mongos to lock and unlock a sharded cluster.

To use this procedure, your MongoDB user must have the fsync authorization, which can be available through a custom role or using the built-in hostManager role.

With this authorization you can run the fsync and fsyncUnlock commands.

To take a self-managed backup of a sharded cluster, complete the following steps:

1

To find a good time to perform a backup, monitor your application and database usage to find a time when chunk migrations, resharding, and schema transformation operations are unlikely to occur.

Note

These steps can only produce a consistent backup if they are followed exactly and no operations are in progress when you begin.

For more information, see Schedule Backup Window for a Self-Managed Sharded Cluster.

2

To prevent chunk migrations from disrupting the backup, connect to mongos and use the sh.stopBalancer() method to stop the balancer:

sh.stopBalancer()

If a balancing round is in progress, the operation waits for balancing to complete.

To verify that the balancer is stopped, use the sh.getBalancerState() method:

use config
while( sh.isBalancerRunning().mode != "off" ) {
print( "Waiting for Balancer to stop..." );
sleep( 1000 );
}
3

The sharded cluster must remain locked during the backup process to protect the database from writes, which may cause inconsistencies in the backup.

To lock a sharded cluster, connect to mongos and use the db.fsyncLock() method:

db.getSiblingDB("admin").fsyncLock()

To confirm the lock, on mongos and the primary mongod of the config servers, run the following aggregation pipeline and ensure that all the shards are locked:

db.getSiblingDB("admin").aggregate( [
{ $currentOp: { } },
{ $facet: {
"locked": [
{ $match: { $and: [
{ fsyncLock: { $exists: true } }
] } }],
"unlocked": [
{ $match: { fsyncLock: { $exists: false } } }
]
} },
{ $project: {
"fsyncLocked": { $gt: [ { $size: "$locked" }, 0 ] },
"fsyncUnlocked": { $gt: [ { $size: "$unlocked" }, 0 ] }
} }
] )
[ { fsyncLocked: true }, { fsyncUnlocked: false } ]
4

To back up the sharded cluster, use mongodump to connect to mongos and perform the backup:

mongodump \
--host mongos.example.net \
--port 27017 \
--username user \
--password "passwd" \
--out /opt/backups/example-cluster-1
5

After the backup completes, you can unlock the cluster to allow writes to resume.

To unlock the cluster, use the db.fsyncUnlock() method:

db.getSibling("admin").fsyncUnlock()

To confirm the unlock, on mongos and the primary mongod of the config servers, run the following aggregation pipeline and ensure that all shards are unlocked:

db.getSiblingDB("admin").aggregate( [
{ $currentOp: { } },
{ $facet: {
"locked": [
{ $match: { $and: [
{ fsyncLock: { $exists: true } }
] } }],
"unlocked": [
{ $match: { fsyncLock: { $exists: false } } }
]
} },
{ $project: {
"fsyncLocked": { $gt: [ { $size: "$locked" }, 0 ] },
"fsyncUnlocked": { $gt: [ { $size: "$unlocked" }, 0 ] }
} }
] )
[ { fsyncLocked: false }, { fsyncUnlocked: true } ]
6

To restart the balancer, use the sh.startBalancer() method:

sh.startBalancer()

To confirm that the balancer is running, use the sh.getBalancerState() method:

sh.getBalancerState()
true

The command returns true when the balancer is running.

You can restore a database from a mongodump backup using mongorestore.

  • To restore a sharded cluster, execute mongorestore against mongos.

  • To migrate to a replica set or standalone server, execute mongorestore against mongod.

Important

If you want to restore the database to a sharded cluster, you must set --nsExclude to exclude the config database:

mongorestore --nsExclude='config.*' /data/backup

For more information, see Back Up and Restore a Self-Managed Deployment with MongoDB Tools.

Back

Use Snapshots