Recommended way to backup MySQL that is running on Windows

MySQL isn’t VSS aware. You’ll need some pre/post freeze/thaw scripts for it. 

• Keep backing up the whole Windows VM with Veeam.
• Add a MySQL-native dump or physical backup before the Veeam job.
• Store that dump somewhere inside the VM on a volume Veeam protects.

An example would look like - 

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

$stamp = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd-HHmmss"
$dumpDir = "D:\MySQLDumps"
$dumpFile = Join-Path $dumpDir "appdb-$stamp.sql"

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $dumpDir | Out-Null

$mysqldump = "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.4\bin\mysqldump.exe"

& $mysqldump `
  --defaults-extra-file="C:\Scripts\mysql-backup.cnf" `
  --single-transaction `
  --quick `
  --routines `
  --events `
  --triggers `
  --hex-blob `
  --databases appdb `
  --result-file="$dumpFile"

if ($LASTEXITCODE -ne 0) {
    throw "mysqldump failed with exit code $LASTEXITCODE"
}

C:\Scripts\mysql-backup.cnf:

[client]
user=backup_user
password=your_password_here
host=localhost

There may be a another way to do this but this one does work fine for the purpose at hand unless its a very large DB, then restore time might come into play. 

It looks like the integration for the Veeam Agent is Linux only.  You need to do a dump like you mentioned to back up from the Windows box.

See here - MySQL | Veeam Backup & Replication Best Practice Guide

Good share Chris. I wasn’t aware of that for MySQL.

We actually do this for one of our DB servers, altho not MySQL. We configure the DB  to do a backup within the server, then simply do image-level (VM) backup of the server to get a Veeam backup of it, and do a DB backup file restore if needed. In the almost 14yrs I’ve been here, we’ve thankfully only needed to use an intra-OS DB backup file once. Works good. 

We’re mostly a Microsoft SQL shop. And I kind of insist that my DBA implement Maintenance Plans using SQL Server Agent (to be fair, I didn’t have to insist, he knows enough that is what you need to do). In our case, the scheduled plan exports the DB in a BAK format to a network share (and only keeps the last xx copies, so it doesn’t eat up all the space). And I set up Veeam to backup that network share.

So basically I’ll be setting up an effectively similar situation for my MYSQL application, just using the OS Scheduled Tasks and the above Powershell script to emulate the SQL Server Agent task. I have  script that cleans up files, so I’ll run that after the MySQL export, so we manage disk space, as well.

Good one there ​@MikeLeone 👍🏻