Back up an offline database
Remember to plan your backup carefully and back up each of your databases, including the |
Command
The neo4j-admin database dump
command can be used for performing a full backup of an offline database.
It dumps a database into a single-file archive, called <database>.dump, and stores it in the <NEO4J_HOME>/data directory.
Alternatively, neo4j-admin database dump
can stream dump to standard output, enabling the output to be piped to another program, for example to neo4j-admin database load
.
If the database is hosted in a cluster, make sure that the database is stopped on the server you are connected to. The command can be run only locally from an online or an offline Neo4j DBMS. It does not support SSL/TLS.
Syntax
neo4j-admin database dump [-h] [--expand-commands]
[--verbose] [--overwrite-destination[=true|false]]
[--additional-config=<file>]
[--to-path=<path> | --to-stdout]
<database>
Description
Dump a database into a single-file archive.
The archive can be used by the load command.
<to-path>
should be a directory (in which case a file called <database>.dump will be created), or --to-stdout
can be supplied to use standard output.
If neither --to-path
or --to-stdout
is supplied server.directories.dumps.root
setting will be used as a destination.
It is not possible to dump a database that is mounted in a running Neo4j server.
Parameters
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
|
Name of the database to dump. Can contain * and ? for globbing. Note that * and ? have special meaning in some shells and might need to be escaped or used with quotes. |
Options
The neo4j-admin database dump
command has the following options:
Option | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
|
Configuration file with additional configuration. |
|
|
Allow command expansion in config value evaluation. |
|
|
Show this help message and exit. |
|
|
Overwrite any existing dump file in the destination folder. |
|
|
Destination folder of a database dump. It is possible to dump databases into AWS S3 buckets, Google Cloud storage buckets, and Azure buckets using the appropriate URI as the path. |
|
|
Use standard output as the destination for the database dump. |
|
|
Enable verbose output. |
|
1. See Tools → Configuration for details. |
The |
Examples
The following examples show how to dump a database using the neo4j-admin database dump
command.
The command creates a file called database.dump where database
is the database specified in the command.
|
Dump the default database neo4j
to a local directory
You can use the following command to create a dump of the default database neo4j
in a local directory.
The target directory must exist before running the command and the database must be offline.
bin/neo4j-admin database dump neo4j --to-path=/full/path/to/dumps
Dump a database to a folder located in a cloud storage
The following examples show how to dump a database to a cloud storage bucket using the --to-path
option.
Neo4j uses the AWS SDK v2 to call the APIs on AWS using AWS URLs.
Alternatively, you can override the endpoints so that the AWS SDK can communicate with alternative storage systems, such as Ceph, Minio, or LocalStack, using the system variables |
-
Install the AWS CLI by following the instructions in the AWS official documentation — Install the AWS CLI version 2.
-
Create an S3 bucket and a directory to store the backup files using the AWS CLI:
aws s3 mb --region=us-east-1 s3://myBucket aws s3api put-object --bucket myBucket --key myDirectory/
For more information on how to create a bucket and use the AWS CLI, see the AWS official documentation — Use Amazon S3 with the AWS CLI and Use high-level (s3) commands with the AWS CLI.
-
Verify that the
~/.aws/config
file is correct by running the following command:cat ~/.aws/config
The output should look like this:
[default] region=us-east-1
-
Configure the access to your AWS S3 bucket by setting the
aws_access_key_id
andaws_secret_access_key
in the~/.aws/credentials
file and, if needed, using a bucket policy. For example:-
Use
aws configure set aws_access_key_id aws_secret_access_key
command to set your IAM credentials from AWS and verify that the~/.aws/credentials
is correct:cat ~/.aws/credentials
The output should look like this:
[default] aws_access_key_id=this.is.secret aws_secret_access_key=this.is.super.secret
-
Additionally, you can use a resource-based policy to grant access permissions to your S3 bucket and the objects in it. Create a policy document with the following content and attach it to the bucket. Note that both resource entries are important to be able to download and upload files.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Id": "Neo4jBackupAggregatePolicy", "Statement": [ { "Sid": "Neo4jBackupAggregateStatement", "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "s3:ListBucket", "s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject", "s3:DeleteObject" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:s3:::myBucket/*", "arn:aws:s3:::myBucket" ] } ] }
-
-
Run
neo4j-admin database dump
command to dump your database into your AWS S3 bucket:bin/neo4j-admin database dump mydatabase --to-path=s3://myBucket/myDirectory/
-
Ensure you have a Google account and a project created in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
-
Install the
gcloud
CLI by following the instructions in the Google official documentation — Install the gcloud CLI. -
Create a service account and a service account key using Google official documentation — Create service accounts and Creating and managing service account keys.
-
Download the JSON key file for the service account.
-
Set the
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
andGOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
environment variables to the path of the JSON key file and the project ID, respectively:export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/path/to/keyfile.json" export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT=YOUR_PROJECT_ID
-
Authenticate the
gcloud
CLI with the e-mail address of the service account you have created, the path to the JSON key file, and the project ID:gcloud auth activate-service-account service-account@example.com --key-file=$GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS --project=$GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
For more information, see the Google official documentation — gcloud auth activate-service-account.
-
Create a bucket in the Google Cloud Storage using Google official documentation — Create buckets.
-
Verify that the bucket is created by running the following command:
gcloud storage ls
The output should list the created bucket.
-
-
Run
neo4j-admin database dump
command to dump your database into your Google bucket:bin/neo4j-admin database dump mydatabase --to-path=gs://myBucket/myDirectory/
-
Ensure you have an Azure account, an Azure storage account, and a blob container.
-
You can create a storage account using the Azure portal.
For more information, see the Azure official documentation on Create a storage account. -
Create a blob container in the Azure portal.
For more information, see the Azure official documentation on Quickstart: Upload, download, and list blobs with the Azure portal.
-
-
Install the Azure CLI by following the instructions in the Azure official documentation — Azure official documentation.
-
Authenticate the neo4j or neo4j-admin process against Azure using the default Azure credentials.
See the Azure official documentation on default Azure credentials for more information.az login
Then you should be ready to use Azure URLs in either neo4j or neo4j-admin.
-
To validate that you have access to the container with your login credentials, run the following commands:
# Upload a file: az storage blob upload --file someLocalFile --account-name accountName - --container someContainer --name remoteFileName --auth-mode login # Download the file az storage blob download --account-name accountName --container someContainer --name remoteFileName --file downloadedFile --auth-mode login # List container files az storage blob list --account-name someContainer --container someContainer --auth-mode login
-
Run
neo4j-admin database dump
command to dump your database into your Azure container:bin/neo4j-admin database dump mydatabase --to-path=azb://myStorageAccount/myContainer/myDirectory/