Incremental encrypted per database backup and Partial restore policy for MySQL 5.7 in replication setup I will run a replication cluster using MySQL 5.7 and I would like to set up for each database a backup policy that has a full once per day + incremental every N hours with data encrypted (based on the full of the day). The backup will be done on the slave obviously.
I've looked to Percona xtrabackup documentation that cover each subject apart but not together.
For the backup steps I do it this way
Full backup command once a day
xtrabackup --backup --encrypt=AES256 
  --encrypt-key=&quot;GCHFLrDFVx6UAsRb88uLVbAVWbK+Yzfs&quot; \
  --compress
  --safe-slave-backup # in order to be able to restore on master \
  --slave-info \
  --databases foo
  --extra-lsndir=/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/full # to get clear text binlog info
  --target-dir=/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/full

Incremental backup every 2 hours
xtrabackup --backup --encrypt=AES256 
  --encrypt-key=&quot;GCHFLrDFVx6UAsRb88uLVbAVWbK+Yzfs&quot; \
  --compress
  --safe-slave-backup # in order to be able to restore on master \
  --slave-info
  --databases foo
  --incremental-basedir=/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/full # use full directory of the day
  --extra-lsndir=/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/incr_020000
  --target-dir=/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/incr_020000

You can see for the backup I pass option --extra-lsndir to get the LSN / checkpoint info in clear text alongside the encrypted ones so the incremental backup can be done. From my test it seems to work fine.
Layout of the full dump
|/data/backups/db_foo/20200201/full 
├── backup-my.cnf.qp.xbcrypt
├── foo
│   ├── db.opt.qp.xbcrypt
│   ├── people.frm.qp.xbcrypt
│   └── people.ibd.qp.xbcrypt
├── ib_buffer_pool.qp.xbcrypt
├── ibdata1.qp.xbcrypt
├── xtrabackup_checkpoints
├── xtrabackup_checkpoints.xbcrypt
├── xtrabackup_info
├── xtrabackup_info.qp.xbcrypt
├── xtrabackup_logfile.qp.xbcrypt
└── xtrabackup_slave_info.qp.xbcrypt

However it's unclear to me the order of the steps necessary to restore the data with incremental and encrypted data together.
so my questions are:

are the backup commands correct ?
do you have some information how should I do the restoration? I'm confused about the order to run the decrypt/decompress/prepare, when to use --apply-log-only even after reading this resource and also how to restore only one database and not ALL the data.

Best.
After digging a bit and also based on this page I have a solution that seems to work fine.
Step 1: Decompress and decrypt backup files
xtrabackup --decompress --decrypt=AES256 --encrypt-key=&quot;GCHFLrDFVx6UAsRb88uLVbAVWbK+Yzfs&quot; \ 
    --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/full --remove-original
xtrabackup --decompress --decrypt=AES256 --encrypt-key=&quot;GCHFLrDFVx6UAsRb88uLVbAVWbK+Yzfs&quot; \
    --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/incr_1 --remove-original
xtrabackup --decompress --decrypt=AES256 --encrypt-key=&quot;GCHFLrDFVx6UAsRb88uLVbAVWbK+Yzfs&quot; \
    --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/incr_2 --remove-original

Step 2: Prepare the data

As we just want to restore one database and not the full mysql server data we pass --export to generate ready to copy files.
We pass also --apply-log to all backup except the last one (from the docs I linked in the question)

xtrabackup --prepare --apply-log-only --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/full/ --export
xtrabackup --prepare --apply-log-only --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/full/ --incremental-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/incr_1 --export
xtrabackup --prepare --target-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/full/ --incremental-dir=/data/backups/db_xxx/incr_2 --export

Step 3: Restore the data
Now we need to replace the table files without deleting the database.
mysql&gt; SELECT CONCAT( 'ALTER TABLE ', a.TABLE_SCHEMA, '.' a.TABLE_NAME, ' DISCARD TABLESPACE;' ) AS 'DISCARD TABLESPACE'
    -&gt; FROM information_schema.tables a WHERE a.TABLE_SCHEMA='foo';
+-----------------------------------------------+
| DISCARD TABLESPACE                            |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| ALTER TABLE foo.t1 DISCARD TABLESPACE;        |
| ALTER TABLE foo.t2 DISCARD TABLESPACE;        |
+-----------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

cp -a /data/backups/db_xxx/full/foo/* /var/lib/mysql/foo/
chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/foo/

mysql&gt; SELECT CONCAT( 'ALTER TABLE ', a.TABLE_SCHEMA, '.' a.TABLE_NAME, ' IMPORT TABLESPACE;' )
    -&gt; FROM information_schema.tables a WHERE a.TABLE_SCHEMA='foo';
+-----------------------------------------------+
| IMPORT TABLESPACE                             |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| ALTER TABLE foo.t1 IMPORT TABLESPACE;         |
| ALTER TABLE foo.t2 IMPORT TABLESPACE;         |
+-----------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)