Currently we have one beefy MySQL database that runs a couple of high traffic Django based websites as well as some e-commerce websites of decent size. As a result we have a fair amount of large databases using both InnoDB and MyISAM tables.

Unfortunately we've recently hit a wall due to the amount of traffic so I've setup another master server to help alleviate reads / backups.

Now at the moment I simply use mysqldump with a few arguments and it's proven to be fine.. until now. Obviously mysqldump is a slow quick method however I believe we've outgrown its use. I now need a good alternative and have been looking into utilizing Maatkits mk-parallel-dump utility or an LVM snapshot solution.

Succinct short version:

• I have a fairly large MySQL databases I need to backup
• Current method using mysqldump is inefficient and slow (causing issues)
• Looking into something such as mk-parallel-dump or LVM snapshots

Any recommendations or ideas would be appreciated - since I have to re-do how we're doing things I rather have it done properly / most efficient :).