Exporting "partial" snapshot to S3 of Looker backend database in AWS RDS MySQL

[mwalle]

Being self-hosted in AWS and with a db file exceeding 600MB we migrated the Looker Backend database from Looker’s HyperSQL implementation to RDS MySQL according to: https://docs.looker.com/setup-and-management/on-prem-mgmt/migrating-to-mysql

We intend to perform a manual snapshot of this RDS database on each Looker upgrade. However, we also want to preserve Point-in-time snapshots in long term storage by exporting snapshots to S3.

Based on the instructions in the file above, we provisioned a db.m5.large RDS instance, which provides ample storage: 100GB. As stated in the above Looker documentation: “Even though the database’s actual usage will likely be in the 5-10 GB range, it’s a good idea to provision 100-150 GB of SSD storage because the provisioned IOPS is based on the amount of storage requested.”

When you backup a snapshot to S3 you can choose to do this as a Partial or All export type: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ExportSnapshot.html

Doing all backs up the entire 100GB Snapshot; that takes a long time.

I would like to be able to take Partial snapshots, but that requires knowing which parts of the snapshot to export by entering one or more tables for Identifiers.

Does anyone have experience with RDS Snapshot Partial Exports to S3 and knowledge of the Looker Backend database schema know what identifiers I should be telling RDS to use in order to Partial export only the data I need to export the looker-backend database rather than exporting the entire RDS snapshot?