26.1. Introducing Backup

Backups are performed over the network, from a running Neo4j server and into a local copy of the database store (the backup). The backup is run using the neo4j-backup tool, which is provided alongside Neo4j Enterprise.

[Important]Important

Neo4j Server must be configured to run a backup service. This is enabled via the configuration parameter dbms.backup.enabled, and is enabled by default. The interface and port the backup service listens on is configured via the parameter dbms.backup.address and defaults to the loopback interface and port 6362. It is typical to reconfigure this to listen on an external interface, by setting dbms.backup.address=<my-host-ip-address>:6362. It can also be configured to listen on all interfaces by setting dbms.backup.address=0.0.0.0:6362.

Performing a backup requires specifying the target host, an optional port, and the backup location. The backup tool will automatically select a full or incremental backup, based on whether an existing backup is present at that location.

See the configuration reference section for detailed documentation on available configuration options.