Filesystem snapshots are also very handy and allow to take consistent backups (of all table engines) with minimal locking:
- “flush tables with read lock;”
- commit a transaction on an innodb table
- take a fs snapshot
- “unlock tables;”
- copy files from snapshot to tape/nfs
- release snapshot
Filesystem snapshots can for example be taken with the linux lvm, or with fssnap on solaris.
Storage systems (like netapp to name only one) also offer snapshot capabilities.