Backing up an Entire Database
Using mongoexport
, we could theoretically take an entire MongoDB server and extract all the data in each database and collection. However, we would have to do this with one collection at a time, ensuring that the files correctly mapped to the original database and collection. Doing this manually is possible but difficult. A script could accomplish this reliably for an entire MongoDB server even with hundreds of collections
Fortunately, along with mongoimport
and mongoexport
, the MongoDB tools package also provides a tool for exporting the entire contents of a database. This utility is called mongodump
. This command creates a backup of the entire MongoDB instance. All you need to provide is the URI (or host and port numbers), and the mongodump
command does the rest. This export creates a binary file that can be restored using mongorestore
(a command covered in the next section). By combining mongodump
and mongorestore
, you have a reliable way of...