# About MongoDB Incremental Backup
**URL:** https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673
**Category:** Percona Backup for MongoDB
**Tags:** mongodb
**Created:** [February 13, 2025, 7:25am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673 "2025-02-13T07:25:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@berkan](https://forums.percona.com/u/berkan)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 7:25am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/1 "2025-02-13T07:25:02Z")
Hi,
I’m encountering an issue while attempting to perform incremental/physical backups on my MongoDB server using PBM. Logical backups are working without any problems, and PITR is properly enabled and functioning.
However, when I try to initiate an incremental backup, PBM is unable to detect or communicate with the backup agents on the MongoDB server. Could you please help me identify if there is any misconfiguration or missing steps in my setup?
Looking forward to your assistance.
Thank you.
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### Author:  [@Ivan\_Groenewold](https://forums.percona.com/u/Ivan_Groenewold)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 11:34am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/2 "2025-02-13T11:34:53Z")
Hi, please check the pbm agent logs on all 3 servers of rs0.
`journalctl -u pbm-agent`
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### Author:  [@berkan](https://forums.percona.com/u/berkan)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 11:55am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/3 "2025-02-13T11:55:40Z")
Hi Ivan,
I did not install pbm on prod servers. I have another server to take backups and I have created agent services to make connections to that servers.
When I check the agent logs, there are bunch of messages that says pitr is creating chunks.
pbm-agent@3.service log messages
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### Author:  [@Ivan\_Groenewold](https://forums.percona.com/u/Ivan_Groenewold)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/4 "2025-02-13T12:00:26Z")
Hi berkan, pbm agent needs to be installed on the same servers as mongod process, otherwise it cannot get access to the mongo files. This is why you physical backup is failing.
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### Author:  [@berkan](https://forums.percona.com/u/berkan)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 12:07pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/5 "2025-02-13T12:07:50Z")
So, I should delete those agents and install them on the rs0 servers, correct?
Once that’s done, I should be able to see the agents on my backup server, which I installed on the production servers, right?
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### Author:  [@Ivan\_Groenewold](https://forums.percona.com/u/Ivan_Groenewold)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2025, 12:26pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/6 "2025-02-13T12:26:09Z")
yes, you don’t need a dedicated backup server that is external to the cluster. Install pbm agent on each rs0 node and that’s it.
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### Author:  [@berkan](https://forums.percona.com/u/berkan)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2025, 7:25am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/7 "2025-02-14T07:25:53Z")
Hi Ivan,
I have installed pbm-agents on server but it is trying to create directory for backups, but I wanted to take backups to the remote server that is not on prod servers.
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### Author:  [@Ivan\_Groenewold](https://forums.percona.com/u/Ivan_Groenewold)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2025, 10:59am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/8 "2025-02-14T10:59:03Z")
Hi, pbm can take backups either to a S3-compatible storage, or to a shared volume that needs to be mounted on every server.
In this case you could export an NFS share from your backup server and mount that one every replica set member
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### Author:  [@berkan](https://forums.percona.com/u/berkan)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2025, 2:22pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/9 "2025-02-14T14:22:55Z")
thank you, and also, mongodb community edition is a barrier right? i have to upgrade to the percona server.
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### Author:  [@Ivan\_Groenewold](https://forums.percona.com/u/Ivan_Groenewold)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/about-mongodb-incremental-backup/36673/10 "2025-02-14T14:55:13Z")
Community edition does not expose backup cursor functionality needed for physical backups, so you need Percona distribution for that. Logical backups will still work though