# Load Data from MySQL using mysqldump

The popular open source tool `mysqldump` is a straightforward way to load data from MySQL into SingleStore. For example, log into a machine running a MySQL database (named `foo` in the following examples), and issue the following commands:

```shell
mysqldump -h 127.0.0.1 -u username -p foo > foodump.sql

```

> **📝 Note**: If using SingleStore Helios, you need to specify the endpoint (you can find this in the Cloud Portal) instead of the host IP address and specify the `admin` user instead of `root`.```shell
> mysqldump -h admin_endpoint -u admin -p foo > foodump.sql
> ```

You can omit the `-h` parameter from this request if this command is run on the localhost. You can also dump specific tables by using the `--tables` option:

```shell
mysqldump -h 127.0.0.1 -u username -p foo --tables tbl_name > foo_tabledump.sql

```

> **📝 Note**: **Error: Unknown collation: ‘utf8mb4-0900\_ai\_ci'**This error may occur because `mysqldump` creates the `.sql` file using the `utf8mb4-0900_ai_ci` collation, but SingleStore Helios uses the `utf8_general_ci` collation. To resolve this error, change the following line in the `foodump.sql` file```sql
> ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
> ```to:```sql
>  ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_general_ci;
> ```

Since SingleStore is a distributed database, you need to tell SingleStore how to shard the data across the workspace. If all your tables have primary keys, SingleStore will automatically use the primary keys to shard them, so you can skip this next step. Otherwise, you need to open up `foodump.sql` in your favorite editor and either add shard keys or declare the tables as reference tables (for more details, see [Porting Tables to SingleStore Helios](https://docs.singlestore.com/cloud/developer-resources/porting-tables-to-singlestore-helios.md).

For instance, suppose `foodump.sql` contains:

```sql
CREATE TABLE users (
  id bigint(20) NOT NULL,
  username varchar(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  address varchar(10)
);

```

To shard this table on the `id` column, use the following statement:

```sql
CREATE TABLE users (
  id bigint(20) NOT NULL,
  username varchar(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  address varchar(10),
  SHARD KEY(id)
);

```

For more information on choosing a shard key, see [Primary Key as the Shard Key](https://docs.singlestore.com/cloud/getting-started-with-singlestore-helios/about-singlestore-helios/sharding.md).

Once all your tables have either shard key or primary key declarations, you can run the following on the master aggregator:

```shell
singlestore -u <username> -h <endpoint> --default-auth=mysql_native_password -p foo < foodump.sql
```

All tables and data from `users` is now loaded into SingleStore.

> **📝 Note**: In MySQL, the `mysqldump` command locks the database to ensure data consistency within the backup. As there is no database-level locking in SingleStore Helios, a database lock does not occur when loading MySQL data into SingleStore Helios via `mysqldump`.

***

Modified at: May 18, 2026

Source: [/cloud/load-data/data-sources/replicate-data-from-mysql/load-data-from-mysql/](https://docs.singlestore.com/cloud/load-data/data-sources/replicate-data-from-mysql/load-data-from-mysql/)

(An index of the documentation is available at /llms.txt)