How to Use Mongodump for Mongodb Backups

Maintaining backups is vital for every organization. Data backups act as a safety measure where data can be recovered or restored in case of an emergency. Typically, you create database backups by replicating the database, using either:

• Built-in tools
• Specialized external backup services

MongoDB offers multiple inbuilt backup options depending on the MongoDB deployment method you use. We’ll look briefly at the options, but then we’ll show you how to utilize one particular option—MongoDB mongodump—for the backup process.

(This article is part of our MongoDB Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.)

Built-in backups in MongoDB

Here are the several options you have for backing up your data in MongoDB:

MongoDB Atlas Backups

If MongoDB is hosted in MongoDB Atlas cloud database service, the Altas service provides automated continuous incremental backups.

Additionally, Altas can be used to create cloud provider snapshots, where local database snapshots are created using the underlying cloud providers’ snapshot functionality.

MongoDB Cloud Manager or Ops Manager

Cloud Manager is a hosted backup, monitoring, and automation service for MongoDB. Cloud Manager enables easy backup and restores functionality while providing offsite backups.

Ops Manager provides the same functionality as Cloud Manager but it can be deployed as an on-premise solution.

MongoDB mongodump

Mongodump is a simple MongoDB backup utility that creates high fidelity BSON files from an underlying database. These files can be restored using the mongorestore utility.

Mongodump is an ideal backup solution for small MongoDB instances due to its ease of use and portability.

File system backups

In this method, you merely keep copies of the underlying data files of a MongoDB installation. We can utilize snapshots if the file system supports it.

Another way is to use a tool like rsync where we can directly copy the data files to a backup directory.

What is MongoDB mongodump?

The mongodump is a utility for creating database backups. The utility can be used for creating binary export of the database contents. Mongodump can export data from both mongod and mongos instances, allowing you to create backups from:

• A standalone, replica set
• A sharded cluster of MongoDB deployments

Before MongoDB 4.4, mongodump was released alongside the MongoDB server and used matched versioning. The new iterations of mongodump are released as a separate utility in MongoDB Database Tools. Mongodump guarantees compatibility with MongoDB 4.4, 4.2, 4.0, and 3.6.

The mongodump utility is supported on most x86_64 platforms and some of ARM64, PPC64LE, and s390x platforms. You can find the full list of platforms that mongodump is compatible with from their documentation.