With any more complex data it is almost impossible to restore data in MySQL Cluster in one step. Usually one needs two steps: ndb_restore <other_options> --disable-indexes ndb_restore <other_options> --rebuild-indexes First step has to be run on all nodes of the cluster. Second step though - just on one node which will rebuild all the indexes. For foreign keys you can try to split first step into two: ndb_restore <other_options> --restore_meta ndb_restore <other_options> --restore_data --disable-indexes `--restore_meta` has to be run on one node. `--restore_data` on all the nodes in cluster.