How do you back up a Mnesia database?

mnesia:backup/1 writes a point-in-time snapshot of the entire database (schema plus table data) to a file, which can later be restored on the same or a different set of nodes.

mnesia:backup("/var/backups/mnesia_20260101.bak").

For finer control — backing up only specific tables, or customizing how the backup interacts with a live, running system — the lower-level mnesia:activate_checkpoint/1 and mnesia:backup_checkpoint/2 functions let you take a consistent snapshot of chosen tables while the database keeps serving reads and writes, rather than a single all-or-nothing full backup call. Regularly scheduled backups are the standard safety net against data loss beyond what replication alone protects against (such as an operator error wiping data across every replica at once).

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