An inordinate amount of our Galera Cluster customer base is still using the MySQL 5.7 variant of Galera Cluster. Besides not being able to have access to all the new features of the Galera 4 library, MySQL 5.7 is rapidly reaching End of Life (EOL) status in October 2023. This is less than six months away, and it is also why we would like to focus on getting our users upgraded to MySQL 8.0 with Galera Cluster.

Firstly, MySQL 8 has been Generally Available (GA) since 19 April 2018. That is a whole five years, and you must by now, already know that there is a new release model, where there are new features included in minor releases. The release notes are a must read. Next, Codership released Galera Cluster 4 with MySQL 8 with MySQL 8.0.19, on …

MySQL has InnoDB data encryption, and Galera Cluster has supported it since it appeared in the main server. The one thing that was not covered was the encryption of the Galera Cache (the galera.cache file).

Here is a simple extract from the binlog.000001 files.

strings binlog.* |grep Custom |wc -l
10000
strings galera.cache |grep Custom |wc -l
10000

strings galera.cache|tail -10
Customer9100
Customer9099
Customer9098
Customer9097
Customer9096
Customer9095
Customer9094
Customer9093
Customer9092
Customer9091

You need to edit your /etc/my.cnf to include:

early-plugin-load=keyring_file.so
keyring_file_data=/var/lib/mysql-keyring/keyring

Note that in this example we are using the keyring_file plugin, which stores keyring data in a file on the local server host. This is not intended for regulatory compliance. You need to use a key management server that protects encryption keys in key vaults or hardware …

A common question we get is: can I add a node to my Galera Cluster without restarting the entire cluster? The simple answer is YES.

A lot worry about the fact that you do list servers that are part of the cluster within your my.cnf, and this file is not reloadable in a dynamic fashion. Fret not, though, because as long as your my.cnf has one active cluster member (the DONOR), you can have it be the JOINER.

If for example, you have 3 nodes: galera1: 159.223.105.21 galera2: 137.184.78.182 galera3: 137.184.65.171

The my.cnf line for wsrep_address should read as follows:

wsrep_cluster_address="gcomm://159.223.105.21,137.184.78.182,137.184.65.171"

It is then trivial for you to have your fourth server (say, galera4: 161.35.120.111), have a my.cnf that reads as follows:

wsrep_cluster_address="gcomm://159.223.105.21,137.184.78.182,137.184.65.171,161.35.120.111"

Now, …

Codership is pleased to announce a new Generally Available (GA) release of the multi-master Galera Cluster for MySQL 5.7, consisting of MySQL-wsrep 5.7.41 (release notes, download) and MySQL-wsrep 8.0.32 (release notes, download). This release incorporates all changes to MySQL 5.7.41 and MySQL 8.0.32 respectively, adding a …

Codership is pleased to announce a new Generally Available (GA) release of the multi-master Galera Cluster for MySQL 5.7, consisting of MySQL-wsrep 5.7.40 (release notes, download) and MySQL-wsrep 8.0.31 (release notes, download) with Galera replication library 4.14 (release notes, download) implementing wsrep API version 26. …

While Galera Manager is ideal for deploying on Amazon AWS or DigitalOcean, or even on your own on-premise hosts, there is a third option that exists, that allows you to monitor an existing cluster that you already have installed. While we won’t go thru installing a Galera Cluster in this post, we will show you how to get Galera Manager to function for this purpose.

Obtain Galera Manager via filling in the form. Once you have the gm-installer on your Galera Manager host, remember to execute: chmod +x gm-installer. We recommend also …

Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s leading event is all set to unite the global mobile and telecoms industry in Barcelona, Spain from 27 February – 2 March 2023. In this framework, Codership is glad to announce that it has been selected by the European Innovation Council to join the EIC Pavilion. The 20 most promising EIC-funded SMEs, startups and scale ups have an unprecedented opportunity to impress the international audience with their game-changing innovations and establish business partnerships with like-minded counterparts.

The EIC Pavilion will feature a wide variety of extraordinary innovations in crucial sectors, such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning and IoT, among others. From interactive sessions and expert panel …

In the event that you are not planning to deploy Galera Cluster using Galera Manager on your own on-premise hosts, it is worth noting that Galera Manager supports the ability to automatically deploy a 3-node Galera Cluster in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) automatically, just by suppling your API key information. Naturally, we also made a video on a step-by-step video on how to install Galera Cluster in an Amazon EC2 using Galera Manager.

It is worth noting that you can use the free tier to deploy your Galera Cluster with Galera Manager for testing purposes.

Obtain Galera Manager via filling in the form. Logon to your AWS Console. Launch just one EC2 …

Our most favoured method of deploying Galera Clusters via Galera Manager happen to be the on-premise option, which is favoured by our customers and users. We have always been under the impression that the cloud deployments (AWS, DigitalOcean) would have more pull, but majority do prefer an on-premise installation. We have also made an appropriate video: A step-by-step video on how to install Galera Cluster on premises using Galera Manager.

So to start, we will deploy 3 hosts, running CentOS 7. These are just deployed with the base operating system (OS). And of course, you need another host to run your Galera Manager, so in total we have four (4) hosts. Obtain Galera Manager via filling in the form.

Once you have the …

We recently covered Upgrading your Galera Cluster from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8.0. We’ve also had questions on how the upgrade path from our usual Galera Cluster “community” edition to the Galera Cluster Enterprise Edition (EE), which includes many new features, like XA transaction support, arm64 support or GCache encryption.

First off, let’s start by installing a Galera Cluster on CentOS 7. The reason we have picked this distribution? Let’s edit the /etc/yum.repos.d/galera.repo and add:

[galera4]
name = Galera
baseurl = https://releases.galeracluster.com/galera-4/centos/7/x86_64
gpgkey = https://releases.galeracluster.com/GPG-KEY-galeracluster.com
gpgcheck = 1

[mysql-wsrep8]
name = MySQL-wsrep
baseurl = https://releases.galeracluster.com/mysql-wsrep-8.0/centos/7/x86_64
gpgkey = …