Pet Pixels

MySQL backup is sometimes very hard to do effectively. MySQL provides various options for backup, but many of them are simply unsuitable for large systems, particularly if they need to remain active during backups. Percona's XtraBackup is an open-source clone of InnoBase's InnoDB Hot Backup utility. So what makes XtraBackup a better solution, and how does it work?

Update: on December 10th 2009, Percona released Xtrabackup 1.0.