bson vs gzip dump of mongodb

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I have a Database with

On disk size 19.032GB (using show dbs command)

Data size 56 GB (using db.collectionName.stats(1024*1024*1024).size command)

While taking mongodump using command mongodump we can set param --gzip. These are the observations I have with and without this flag.

command timeTaken in dump size of dump restoration time observation
with gzip 30 min 7.5 GB 20 min in mongostat the insert rate was ranging from 30K to 80k par sec
without gzip 10 min 57 GB 50 min in mongostat the insert rate was very erratic, and ranging from 8k to 20k par sec

Dump was taken from machine with 8 core, 40 GB ram(Machine B) to 12 core, 48GB ram machine (Machine A). And restored to 12 core, 48 gb machine(Machine C) from Machine A to make sure there is no resource contention between mongo, mongorestore and mongodump process. Mongo version 4.2.0

I have few questions like

  1. What is the functional difference between 2 dumps?
  2. Can the bson dump be zipped to make it zip?
  3. how does number of indexes impact the mongodump and restore process. (If we drop some unique indexes and then recreate it, will it expedite total dump and restore time? considering while doing insert mongodb will not have to take care of uniqueness part)
  4. Is there a way to make overall process faster. From these result I see that have we have to choose 1 between dump and restore speed.
  5. Will having a bigger machine(RAM) which reads the dump and restores it expedite the overall process?
  6. Will smaller dump help in overall time?
mongodump mongorestore mongodb
1 Answers

I am no MongoDB expert, but I have good experience working with MongoDB backup and restore activities and will answer to the best of my knowledge.

  1. What is the functional difference between 2 dumps?

  • mongodump command without the use of the --gzip option will save each and every document to a file in bson format.

    This will significantly reduce the time taken for backup and restore operations since it just reads the bson file and inserts the document, with the compromise being the .bson dump file size

  • However, when we pass the --gzip option, the bson data is compressed and it is being dumped to a file. This will significantly increase the time taken for mongodump and mongorestore, but the size of the backup file will be very less due to compression.

  1. Can the bson dump be zipped to make it zip?

  • Yes, it can be further zipped. But, You will be spending additional time since you have to compress the already compressed file and extract it again before the restore operation, increasing the overall time taken. Do it if the compressed file size is very small compared to just gzip.

    EDIT:

    As @best wishes pointed, I completely misread this question.

    gzip performed by mongodump is just a gzip performed on the mongodump side. It is literally the same as compressing the original BSON file manually from our end.

    For instance, If you extract the .gzip.bson file with any compression application, you will get the actual BSON backup file.

    Note that zip and gzip are not the same (in terms of compression) since they both use different compression algorithms, even though they both compress files. So you will get different results in file size on comparing mongodump gzip and manual zip of files.

  1. How does number of indexes impact the mongodump and restore process. (If we drop some unique indexes and then recreate it, will it expedite total dump and restore time? considering while doing insert mongodb will not have to take care of uniqueness part)

  • Whenever you take a dump, mongodump tool creates a <Collection-Name.metadata.json> file. This basically contains all the indexes followed by collection name, uuid, colmod, dbUsersAndRoles and so on.

  • The number and type of index in the collection will not have an impact during the mongodump operation. However, after the restoration of data using mongorestore command, it will go through all the indexes in the metaadata file and try to recreate the indexes.

  • The time taken by this operation depends on the number of indexes and the number of documents in your collection. In short (No. of Indexes * No. of Documents). The type of the index (Even if it's unique) doesn't have a mojor impact on performance. If the indexes are applied in the original collection using the background: true option, it's going to take even more time to rebuild the indexes while restoring.

  • You can avoid the indexing operaion during the mongorestore operation by passing the --noIndexRestore option in commandline. You can index later on when required.

In the Production backup environment of my company, indexing of keys takes more time compared to the restoration of data.

  1. Is there a way to make the overall process faster. From these result I see that have we have to choose 1 between dump and restore speed

The solution depends...

  • If Network bandwidth is not an issue (Example: Moving data between two instances running in the cloud), don't use and compression, since it will save you time.

  • If the data in the newly moved instance won't be accessed immediately, perform the restoration process with the --noIndexRestore flag.

  • If the backup is for cold storage or saving data for later use, apply gzip compression, or manual zip compression, or both (whatever works best for you)

Choose whichever scenario works best for you, but you have to find the right balance between time and space primarily while deciding and secondly, whether to apply indexes or not.

In my company, we usually take non-compressed backup and restore for P-1 and gzip compression for weeks old prod backups, and further manually compress it for backups that are months older.

  • You have one more option and I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS METHOD. you can directly move the data path pointed by your MongoDB instance and change the DB path in the MongoDB instance of the migrated machine. Again, I don't recommend this method as there are many things that could go wrong, although I had no issues with this methodology on my end. But I can't guarantee the same for you. Do this at your own risk if you decide to.
  1. Will having a bigger machine(RAM) which reads the dump and restores it expedite the overall process?
  • I don't think so. I am not sure about this, but I have 16 GB RAM and I restored a backup of 40GB mongodump to my local and didn't face any bottleneck due to RAM, but I could be wrong as I am not sure. Please let me know if you come to know the answer yourself.
  1. Will smaller dump help in overall time?
  • If by smaller dump, you mean limiting the data to be dumped using the --query flag, for sure it will since the data to be backed up and restored is very less. Remember the No. of Indexes * No. of Documents rule.

Hope this helped you answer your questions. Let me know if you have any:

  • Any further questions
  • If I made any mistakes
  • Found a better solution
  • What you have decided finally
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