innobackupex --no-lock and innodb mixed with MyISAM tables

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to figure out what the best solution is to use innobackupex with a db server that has around 4000 databases where most tables are innodb, but some are MyISAM. When --no-lock is not used, innobackupex issues ‘flush tables with read lock’ to backup myisam tables and .frm files. With 4000 databases, it takes a long time to copy all .frm files while the server is locked. What would be a better solution to not lock all tables, but still copy all .frm files, and only lock the tables to copy MyISAM files that were created since the backup started?

I assume if I didn’t use the --no-lock option, with 4000 databases innobackup will lock the whole server for a long time to just copy the .frm files.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

I believe an upcoming (or recently released?) version of innobackupex solves this with a two-phase .frm rsync. The first one is done without a lock in place.