Backup to Amazon S3

For an additional per-run fee, you can automate the daily or weekly backup of the databases you host on MongoHQ. This will allow you better control and more rapid access to your data if you need to restore. Once backups are activated, you will be able to enter your Amazon S3 credentials and set the number of backups for this database.

Setup

To configure backups, choose the database you wish to back up, then click the Admin tab for that database. On the Admin page that comes up, click the Backups tab.

Choose the schedule you would like for your backups. You can select weekly, daily, or hourly backups, the time of your backup, and you can choose how many recent backups to keep. Please be aware that during peak hours, backups may cause slower query times for your database, so schedule accordingly.

Quickly estimate your backup cost by entering the approximate GB amount you are backing up.

You can use an existing S3 bucket for your backups or create a new one.

To create a new AWS S3 bucket, go to your AWS S3 console, and click on the 'Create Bucket' button. Name your bucket, (you will need to choose a unique name - please see the Amazon docs regarding this), choose the region you want, then click the 'Create' button.

To retrieve the AWS Key and Secret information, go to the Security Credentials section in your AWS account and find the 'Access Credentials' section. You can either use an existing key or create a new one to use with MongoHQ.

The AWS 'Access Key ID' corresponds to the 'AWS Key' field on the backups page, and the AWS 'Secret Access Key' corresponds to the AWS Secret field.

Once you are all done, click the 'Save Settings' button. MongoHQ will validate your S3 credentials and schedule your backup.

You can edit your backup schedule or disable the backup at any time by returning to the Backups tab and clicking the 'Edit schedule' link. You can also perform a one-time backup immediately by going to the Backups tab and clicking the 'Backup Now' button.

Pricing

Pricing for database backups is on a per-run basis and allows you the most flexibility about how often you want your data backed up and what frequency fits your budget. Plans to backup your data start at around $15 per month for a daily backup of a 1GB database. That is based on $0.50 per run for databases 1GB or smaller (additional $0.05/run for additional GBs).

Per Month Examples of Pricing:

How is my database backed up?

You give us the credentials to an S3 account and bucket name. We backup the data to a folder called mongohq_backups inside of that bucket.

Our process is as follows:

1. We export your data using mongodump.
2. We tar + gzip the data.
3. We upload the data into a mongohq_backups folder in your S3 bucket.

How are the data files stored?

The files are stored with a special naming convention that helps you to visually navigate the backups and tell when a backup is from. They are stored in the following format:

[database_name]_[account_identifier]_[YYYYMMDDhhmmss].tgz

So a backup of a database named temple on an account with identifier 123456 taken at 3:00:23pm CST on January 3rd 2012 would look as follows:

temple_123456_20120103200023.tgz

You will notice the times in the timestamp are in UTC.

A note on Amazon S3 Permissions and IAM

For additional security, if you would like to set up your AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management), you need to ensure that you include the ListAllMyBuckets permission. Below is an example implementation:

{
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
        "s3:ListBucket"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::*"
    },
    {
      "Action": [
        "s3:PutObject",
        "s3:PutObjectAcl",
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:GetObjectAcl",
        "s3:DeleteObject",
        "s3:DeleteObjectAcl"
      ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::MY-BACKUP-BUCKET/*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

If you have more questions about this, please let us know by sending an email to support@mongohq.com.

Related Questions

Why do you charge for this service? Copying, compressing and moving data is quite CPU and bandwidth intensive. The charge allows us to be able to add additional hardware for the processing of backups as demand grows. One benefit is that since we take the time to compress your data it takes up considerable less space in your S3 thereby saving you money in storage and allowing you to keep more copies at a lower rate. For instance a 43.9MB database was compacted down to 1.26MB before storing on S3.

If I am using MongoHQ through an Add-on Provider, can I use backups? Due to limitations, we do not offer S3 backups when used as an Add-On to a Provider. To enable S3 backups, create a MongoHQ account and connect to your MongoHQ database from your application. With or without S3 Backups, MongoHQ performs Automated Backups for disaster recovery purposes. For more information on Automated Backups, please see Automated Backups Documentation