Backing up an Entire Database

Using mongoexport, we could theoretically take an entire MongoDB server and extract all the data in each database and collection. However, we would have to do this with one collection at a time, ensuring that the files correctly mapped to the original database and collection. Doing this manually is possible but difficult. A script could accomplish this reliably for an entire MongoDB server even with hundreds of collections

Fortunately, along with mongoimport and mongoexport, the MongoDB tools package also provides a tool for exporting the entire contents of a database. This utility is called mongodump. This command creates a backup of the entire MongoDB instance. All you need to provide is the URI (or host and port numbers), and the mongodump command does the rest. This export creates a binary file that can be restored using mongorestore (a command covered in the next section). By combining mongodump and mongorestore, you have a reliable way of...