heroku-mongo-backup does:

1. Backup mongodb collections to one file;
2. Compress backup file with gzip;
3. Push backup to the specified S3 bucket or FTP server;

Why not mongodump command?

mongodump command is not available on Heroku side. If you don't want to setup third party backup service for every project heroku-mongo-backup may be helpful.

For mongoid 4 add to the Gemfile: gem "heroku-mongo-backup", github: 'alexkravets/heroku-mongo-backup', branch: 'mongoid4', for the rest of mongoid versions add gem "heroku-mongo-backup" - if everything's okay rake -T command should show rake mongo:backup rake tasks.

For S3 support heroku-mongo-backup requires s3 or aws-s3 or fog library. One of those should be in Gemfile, if you don't care add fog it's seems to be the most advanced.

Configure heroku scheduler to run mongo:backup rake task. Or if cron is used add backup task to /lib/tasks/cron.rake file:

desc "This task is called by the Heroku cron add-on"
task :cron => :environment do
  Rake::Task['mongo:backup'].invoke
end

Set Heroku environment variables:

heroku config:add S3_BACKUPS_BUCKET=_value_ S3_KEY_ID=_value_ S3_SECRET_KEY=_value_ MONGO_URL=_value_

On MONGO_URL place anyone of these is assaptable: MONGOHQ_URL or MONGOLAB_URI.

For FTP set these variables:

heroku config:add UPLOAD_TYPE=ftp FTP_HOST=_host_ FTP_PASSWORD=_pass_ FTP_USERNAME=_user_

• heroku run rake mongo:backup

If you want to automatically remove old backup files pass MAX_BACKUPS parameter to the rake command:

• heroku run rake mongo:backup MAX_BACKUPS=7

If you're uploading to S3, backup files will be stored as backups/YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss.gz by default. To change the directory name, pass in the S3_BACKUP_DIR parameter:

• heroku run rake mongo:backup S3_BACKUP_DIR=daily
• Backup files would then be stored as daily/backup-file-name.gz instead of backups/backup-file-name.gz.

Restore from backup:

• heroku run rake mongo:restore FILE=backup-file-name.gz

If you want to restore from local file run:

• rake mongo:restore LOCAL=/absolute/path/to/<backup-file.gz>

For Rails 2 add this to your Rakefile to import rake tasks:

import File.expand_path(File.join(Gem.datadir('heroku-mongo-backup'), '..', '..', 'lib', 'tasks', 'heroku_mongo_backup.rake'))

1. alexkravets - slatestudio.com - gem itself with S3 support
2. matyi - FTP support
3. stefl - stef.io - Rails is not required for production
4. moonhouse - moonhouse.se - default config improvement
5. wolfpakz - Rails2 support
6. solacreative - Max backups feature for aws/s3 and s3 gems
7. aarti - minor fixes
8. strayduy - Configurable S3 directory name