You can back up your data in two ways:
- On-demand. You can do them manually at any moment.
- Scheduled backups. Configure backups and their schedule in the deploy/cr.yaml :octicons-link-external-16:. The Operator makes them automatically according to the specified schedule.
To make backups and restores, the Operator uses the Percona Backup for MongoDB (PBM) :octicons-link-external-16: tool. The Operator runs PBM as a sidecar container to the database Pods. It configures PBM in the following cases:
- when it creates a new cluster if you defined the backup storage configuration for it.
- when you configure the backup storage for a backup
- when you start a restore on a new cluster and defined the backup storage configuration within the
backupSourcesubsection of the Restore resource.
You can store Percona Server for MongoDB backups outside the Kubernetes cluster using the following remote backup storages:
- Amazon S3 or S3-compatible storage :octicons-link-external-16:,
- MinIO :octicons-link-external-16: S3-compatible storage
- Azure Blob Storage :octicons-link-external-16:
Starting with version 1.20.0, the Operator natively supports multiple backup storages :octicons-link-external-16:, inheriting this feature from Percona Backup for MongoDB (PBM). This means you don't have to wait till the Operator reconfigures a cluster after you select a different storage for a backup or a restore. And you can make a point-in-time recovery from any backup stored on any storage - PBM and the Operator maintain the data consistency for you.
Find more information in the Multiple storages for backups chapter.
The Operator can do either logical or physical backups.
-
Logical backup means querying Percona Server for MongoDB for the database data and writing the retrieved data to the remote backup storage.
-
Physical backup means copying physical files from Percona Server for MongoDB
dbPathdata directory to the remote backup storage.
Logical backups use less storage, but are much slower than physical backup/restore.
!!! warning
Logical backups made with the Operator versions before 1.9.0 are
incompatible for restore with the Operator 1.9.0 and later. That is because Percona Backup
for MongoDB 1.5.0 used by the newer Operator versions
[processes system collections Users and Roles differently :octicons-link-external-16:](https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-backup-mongodb/running.html#pbm-running-backup-restoring).
The recommended approach is to **make a fresh backup after upgrading**
**the Operator to version 1.9.0**.