Automatically backup a MongoDB database to S3 using mongodump, tar, and awscli (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS)

mongodb-s3-backup.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Make sure to:
# 1) Name this file `backup.sh` and place it in /home/ubuntu
# 2) Run sudo apt-get install awscli to install the AWSCLI
# 3) Run aws configure (enter s3-authorized IAM user and specify region)
# 4) Fill in DB host + name
# 5) Create S3 bucket for the backups and fill it in below (set a lifecycle rule to expire files older than X days in the bucket)
# 6) Run chmod +x backup.sh
# 7) Test it out via ./backup.sh
# 8) Set up a daily backup at midnight via `crontab -e`:
#    0 0 * * * /home/ubuntu/backup.sh > /home/ubuntu/backup.log

# DB host (secondary preferred as to avoid impacting primary performance)
HOST=db.example.com

# DB name
DBNAME=my-db

# S3 bucket name
BUCKET=s3-bucket-name

# Linux user account
USER=ubuntu

# Current time
TIME=`/bin/date +%d-%m-%Y-%T`

# Backup directory
DEST=/home/$USER/tmp

# Tar file of backup directory
TAR=$DEST/../$TIME.tar

# Create backup dir (-p to avoid warning if already exists)
/bin/mkdir -p $DEST

# Log
echo "Backing up $HOST/$DBNAME to s3://$BUCKET/ on $TIME";

# Dump from mongodb host into backup directory
/usr/bin/mongodump -h $HOST -d $DBNAME -o $DEST

# Create tar of backup directory
/bin/tar cvf $TAR -C $DEST .

# Upload tar to s3
/usr/bin/aws s3 cp $TAR s3://$BUCKET/

# Remove tar file locally
/bin/rm -f $TAR

# Remove backup directory
/bin/rm -rf $DEST

# All done
echo "Backup available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/$BUCKET/$TIME.tar"

when running aws configure shall I set the default output format to zip? or tar.gz? by default it is json.

I am using Debian on a ec2 container. I keep getting cowardly errors on archiving the database. The data is there and I got it to tar with out the -C by hand. But any time I use the script it fails.

@TopHatMan What is the exact error message you are facing?

@eladnava
will it be okay if the mongodump size is over 11G?

Hi @alidavid0418,
Should be fine, you will need at least 23GB free space on your / mounted partition. S3 definitely supports large files. :)

@eladnava
Thank you for your kind attention and confirmation. +1

error parsing command line options: expected argument for flag -h, --host', but got option -d'

how to backup MongoDB(ECS container) data backup on s3 bucket
how to run the backup script and where?

and a simpler way to do all this is: mongodump --archive --gzip | aws s3 cp - s3://my-bucket/some-file

clean and simple! thanks