MySQL backup strategy for high-traffic sites

I'm currently using mysqldump to back up databases that are growing rapidly in size. Though I run it late at night, there have been occasional problems when it happens to run during a moment of high traffic (which happens at night sometimes). For example, last night one of my sites locked up just after the time of the database backup with a completely full (and non-clearing) processlist.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a better way to approach this? Putting the site in a temporary maintenance state during backup is not an option as the goal is to maximize availability (some sql dumps take awhile). One idea that comes to mind is to run both master and slave copies and shut down + back up the slave copy, leaving the master copy alone during the process. Hopefully there is a simpler solution though - I'd rather not run a slave copy for backup purposes only unless absolutely necessary. Any开发者_如何学运维 suggestions?

Thanks.

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Two thoughts:

1. run the slave. If nothing else, it gives you a warm spare for your production traffic in case of failure. You can also run reports and tools from it, freeing up cycles from your production server.
2. get to innodb and use mysqldump --single-transaction (see man page)

Good luck!

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I use Percona Xtrabackup, which is similar to InnoDB Hot Backup with more functionality and is distributed for free. Xtrabackup takes snapshots without locking innodb tables and will record the current master logfile info and, if requested, the slave info if you are taking a backup from a slave.

I would recommend running a slave and doing a backup like this or with mysqldump. The slave gives you a hot backup that you can quickly switch over to and be up and running within minutes if your master blows up due to a hardware issue or various software or user error issues that take out the server. The backup with xtrabackup or mysqldump gives you a backup that you can use to restore data in case you accidentally drop a table or delete some rows you shouldn't have, since the replicated server wouldn't save you there.