Without purchasing the MySQL hot copy from Innodb, how should you back up an InnoDB database?
CLARIFICATIONS:
1) This is for a "brick and mortor" type business... not e-commerce.
2) I do not require the system to be available 24/7 in the sense that tables are not locked and can even afford some time in the middle of the night to shut down the server (MySQL that is).
2) In the middle of the night no one would be updating it. Maybe a few automated processes would run to pull data, but I can schedule around a backup.
3) For now this will be an inhouse server that we may try and move to the internet for various reasons.
Would creating a dump to a text file be the best bet? Simple, clean, easy to restore... or following what the MySQL manual suggests.
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"Shut down your MySQL database and make sure it shuts down without errors.
Copy all your datafiles into a safe place.
Copy all your InnoDB log files to a safe place.
Copy your `my.cnf' configuration file(s) to a safe place.
Copy all the `.frm' files for your InnoDB tables into a safe place."
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Thanks for any thoughts!