Backing up App Manager

What is the best way (most efficient) way to backup both the MySQL DB and the configuration files? I would like to be able to restore to a point in time. Our current enterprise backup [Veritas/ symantec] does not have a client for the the version of Linux we are using. So what ever I use will need to backup to a local disk (this disk is actually mounted from a system being backed up by Veritas). I need to be able to restore to a point in time, without loosing more than 24 hours worth of data. I have been shutting everything down then using tar and gzip to create a file but the file is getting rather large and the time AppManager is down is getting longer.

Thanks

shoe