Database Reference
In-Depth Information
11.3. Backups
Your social network site is whirring along nicely, generating great revenue and kudos for
you, then suddenly...bam! Your administrator informs you that there was a hardware fail-
ure, and the current data is corrupted.
Atthispoint,yourheartwilleithersink,andyou'llsay,“Ireallyshouldhavethoughtabout
backing the data up,” or you'll sit back and think, “No worries, we have backups.”
Assuming you choose to be in the latter camp, this section aims to provide all the inform-
ation needed to ensure that if and when such disasters do strike, you're prepared, and it
doesn't mean the end of the world.
We'llbeginbylookingatwhat'sinvolvedinperformingasimple offlinebackup,aprocess
that
does
involve downtime, but one that can be performed on any edition of the Neo4j
database,includingthefreeCommunityedition.Forthecaseswhereyoureallycan'tafford
for the database to be offline, the online backup functionality comes into play, but this is
available only in the Neo4j Enterprise edition.
11.3.1. Offline backups
At the end of the day, the physical files that comprise the Neo4j database all reside under
a single directory on a filesystem, and this is what ultimately needs to be backed up. As
stated in the introduction to this section, this process will work on any edition of the Neo4j
database, but it will most probably only be used on the Community edition. (If you have
access to the Enterprise edition, you may as well make use of the online backup function-
ality.)
The process itself is relatively straightforward and involves the following steps:
1
. Shut down the Neo4j instance.
2
. Copy the physical Neo4j database files to a backup location.
3
. Restart the Neo4j instance.
