MySQL Database Service is a fully managed cloud service, 100% Developed, Managed and Supported by the MySQL Team.
This is the second episode of “Discovering MySQL Database Service“, a series of tutorials where I will show you, step by step, how to use MySQL Database Service and some other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.
Please also note that you can run this tutorial and thus try MySQL Database Service & the other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services for free by starting your 30-day trial.
In the previous episode we’ve introduced the different components that will be used during this Discovering MySQL Database Service journey.
In this episode, we’ll see what is a compartment, how to create one and use it in order to create a MySQL DB system.
Compartment
A compartment is a collection of related resources that can be accessed only by groups that have been given permission by an administrator in your organization.
Actually, compartment is a powerful Oracle Cloud Infrastructure feature for security that would allow you to organize and isolate your cloud resources.
Please note that it is not mandatory to create compartments, it means that all your assets would be in the root compartment (the default) but it is obviously a bad practice 🙂
Create a compartment
Create a compartment is very simple.
Assuming that you already setup your tenancy —Setting Up Your Tenancy — you can use the console menu :
Go to: Identity & Security and Compartments
Fill Name and Description fields
Then push Create Compartment button
Here we go! The compartment is now created.
Well, that’s all for today! In this episode, following the best practices, we have created our compartment where we will store our resources. Thus we are able to enforce security isolation and access control.
MySQL Database Service is a fully managed cloud service, 100% Developed, Managed and Supported by the MySQL Team.
This is the first episode of “Discovering MySQL Database Service“, a series of tutorials where I will show you, step by step, how to use MySQL Database Service and some other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.
Please also note that you can run this tutorial and thus try MySQL Database Service & the other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services for free by starting your 30-day trial.
Like any series, in this episode I’m going to give you some context and set up the characters.
Open Source Software
As you may know, Open Source Software has been mainstream in the enterprise for quite some time. Open Source usage still increases and it also drives innovation (you can read this and this). This is particularly the case for Open Source Databases, like MySQL obviously.
MySQL
MySQL, The world’s most popular open source database
Most popular database (Jetbrains survey – Stackoverflow survey) means you’ll find experts, experienced DBA, skilled developers, tons of resources… to help you to grow your business.
Popular also means that MySQL is widely used and used in many industries that run various workloads.
MySQL is the ideal database if your use case is:
Cloud Native Apps
Move Existing Workloads
Hybrid Cloud Flexibility
SaaS Applications
MySQL is the right database for on-premise, cloud and hybrid architectures.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a deep and broad platform of public cloud services that enables customers to build and run a wide range of applications in a scalable, secure, highly available, and high-performance environment.
Some highlights of this Next-generation cloud infrastructure:
You can freely use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services – including MySQL Database Service – by trying the Oracle Cloud Free Tier.
What’s included with Oracle Cloud Free Tier?
What’s included with Oracle Cloud Free Tier?
MySQL Database Service (MDS)
In Short: MDS = OCI + MySQL
Ok, please allow me to elaborate a little more 🙂
MySQL Database Service is a fully managed cloud service. Meaning that low-value tasks (no direct value for the business) are done by the MySQL team at OCI:
MDS is a fully managed cloud service
It is also worth noting that MDS is:
100% Developed by the MySQL team
100% Managed by the MySQL team
100% Supported by the MySQL Team, 24/7
100% Up to date with the latest security fixes
100% Built on MySQL EnterpriseEdition
100% Compatible with on-premises MySQL
100% Compatible with Oracle technologies
In terms of features, you will obviously find the common one, High Availability, Replication, Migration tools,… Learn more…
However it is exclusively in OCI that you will find HeatWave : the only MySQL cloud service with a massively-scalable integrated analytics engine. In other words, HeatWave is a MySQL cloud service with an integrated, high-performance, in-memory query accelerator that enables customers to run sophisticated analytics directly against their operational MySQL databases, eliminating the need for complex, time-consuming, and expensive data movement and integration with a separate analytics database. Learn more…
Last but not least, with MDS you’re going to save money!
Components
A DBMS is indeed part of a chain of components. In this series we will deal with different concepts and components. Below the main ones:
Tenancy A secure and isolated partition within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) where you can create, organize, and administer your cloud resources. When you sign up for OCI, a tenancy is created for your company. Tenancy also refers to the root compartment that contains all of your organization’s compartments and other OCI resources.
Region A collection of availability domains located in a single geographic location.
Availability Domain One or more isolated, fault-tolerant Oracle data centers that host cloud resources such as instances, volumes, and subnets. A region contains one or more availability domains.
Fault Domain A logical grouping of hardware and infrastructure within an availability domain. Fault domains isolate resources during hardware failure or unexpected software changes.
Groups A collection of users who all need a particular type of access to a set of resources or compartment.
Policy An Identity and Access Management (IAM) document that specifies who has what type of access to your resources. Policy can refer to several types of documents: an individual statement written in the policy language, a collection of statements in a single named “policy” document, and the overall body of policies that your organization uses to control access to resources.
Compartment A collection of related resources that can be accessed only by groups that have been given permission by an administrator in your organization.
Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) A virtual version of a traditional network — including CIDRs, subnets, route tables, and gateways — on which your instance runs.
Security Lists A virtual firewalls for your Compute instances and other kinds of resources.
Object Storage An internet-scale, high-performance storage platform that offers reliable and cost-efficient data durability.
MySQL Database Service (MDS) A fully managed database service that lets developers quickly develop and deploy secure, cloud native applications using the world’s most popular open source database.
Bastion Provide restricted and time-limited secure access to resources that don’t have public endpoints and require strict resource access controls.
SSH Client Software program which uses the secure shell protocol to connect to a remote computer.
MySQL Shell An interactive Javascript, Python, or SQL interface supporting development and administration for the MySQL Server
MySQL Workbench A unified visual tool for database architects, developers, and DBAs that provides data modeling, SQL development, and comprehensive administration tools for server configuration, user administration, backup, and much more
Cloud Shell A web browser-based terminal accessible from the Oracle Cloud Console. It provides access to a Linux shell, with a pre-authenticated Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI, a pre-authenticated Ansible installation, and other useful tools.
In this series of articles, I assume that you already setup your tenancy. More information: Setting Up Your Tenancy
Well, that’s all for today! I have introduced you to the different characters of this Discovering MySQL Database Service series.
Not so much technical contents so far, but I swear there will be more next time 🙂
If you have (too) long running select queries it is probably because of lack of relevant indexes, problematic schema that lead to poor queries or inadequate hardware.
That said, sometime even if you doing it right, the query execution time could be too long regarding of what the application or your users expect. It is often true for reporting, real time analytics or BI queries.
If your application already use a MySQL database that is not MySQL Database Service, you can still use HeatWave, thanks to the Inbound Replication feature.
This is basically what you architecture will look like
Inbound Replication with MySQL Database Service
Your “problematic” select queries will be running on MDS (with HeatWave plugin enabled).
Create this architecture is pretty simple, this is the topic of this article…
Assumptions You have an application and a MySQL instance somewhere (on-premise / public | private cloud / on the moon, …), called 10.0.1.9 in this article. You’ve already created your HeatWave instance, called MDSHW(10.0.1.10) in this article.
Last but not least, you want to dramatically improve the response time of your select queries.
You can take advantage of the power of HeatWave, by setup a replication channel between your MySQL instance and a MySQL Database Service with a HeatWave cluster.
For simplicity, in this blog post the MySQL instance is on OCI. However this architecture is also relevant with the DB out of OCI. In that case you will need a VPN (e.g. Using OpenVPN with MySQL Database Service).
Also for simplicity, I’m using MySQL 8.0. However, the following architecture is also relevant with MySQL 5.7. To understand how to setup a replication channel from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL Database Service, you can read : Replicate from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL Database Service.
What is the plan?
Assuming we already have the application and a MySQL 8.0 database running, we will:
Create a dedicated replication user on the source
Create a dump of the MySQL instance
Load the dump into MySQL Database Service with HeatWave
Create a replication channel on MySQL Database Service with HeatWave
Enable a HeatWave cluster
Create a dedicated replication user on the source
Connect to the MySQL source instance (10.0.1.9), using MySQL Shell:
$
mysqlsh root@localhost:3306 --sql
then create the replication user:
MySQL localhost:3306 ssl SQL >
CREATE USER rpl@'10.0.1.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'Rpl1234_' REQUIRE SSL;
with his relevant privileges:
MySQL localhost:3306 ssl SQL >
GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE on *.* to rpl@'10.0.1.%';
Simple!
Create a dump of the MySQL instance
If you think mysqldump (or mysqlpump) when you heard “dump” then it is time to upgrade your knowledge!!! 🙂
When using MySQL 8.0 or even 5.7, forget these 2 tools and please welcome MySQL Shellutilities and especially its load / dump tools – you’ll thank me later 😉
In this scenario the dump is stored locally. But MySQL Shell also allow you to store your dump into an OCI Object Storage Bucket. This could be a better alternative if your data set is large.
Super simple!
Load the dump into MySQL Database Service with HeatWave
Now it is the time to load the dump into MySQL Database Service with HeatWave (10.0.1.10).
MySQL Shell loadDump utility is even more amazing than you think! It allows you to start loading in parallel the dump even if it is not completed yet 🙂
Please note the updateGtidSet option. Documentation is available here.
Very simple!
Create a replication channel on MySQL Database Service with HeatWave
This step is even easier than the other 🙂 because most of the work will be done using the OCI console. I already described it in this article and you’ll find all the details in the documentation.
Below the main stages.
The feature we are looking for is named Channel. You can find it by clicking on “MySQL” then “Channel” and finally push the “Create Channel” button
Create a replication channel on MySQL Database Service
Then fill the form:
Create in Compartment: Choose the right Compartment
Source Connection – Configure Connection to the MySQL Source Hostname: 10.0.0.9
Username: rpl (from the replication user created on the source)
Password: Rpl1234_ (from the replication user created on the source)
SSL Mode: – set when create the replication user – Required (REQUIRED) Establish an encrypted connection.
Target – Configure the DB System target Select a DB System: MDSHW
Finally, push the Create Channel button… et voilà!
Wait for the Channel icon become green (ACTIVE)…
You can confirm the creation of the replication channel with the command SHOW REPLICA STATUS\G or run the following query using the replication channel name (default: replication_channel) :
MySQL 10.0.1.10:3306 ssl SQL >
SELECT
SERVICE_STATE,
HOST,
USER,
PORT,
CHANNEL_NAME
FROM performance_schema.replication_connection_configuration
INNER JOIN performance_schema.replication_applier_status
USING (CHANNEL_NAME)
WHERE CHANNEL_NAME = 'replication_channel'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
SERVICE_STATE: ON
HOST: 10.0.0.9
USER: rpl
PORT: 3306
CHANNEL_NAME: replication_channel
Enable a HeatWave cluster
The last stage covered in this article is how to enable the HeatWave cluster.
You must choose the number of node (2 minimum), it depends of the size of the data you want to put in HeatWave. The “Estimate Node Count” feature will help you.
Enable a HeatWave cluster
Then click Add HeatWave Cluster button.
What next?
There are some data preparation and finally load the data into the HeatWave cluster.
Up until now we have seen MDS (MySQL Database Service) and MySQL in Azure. As the Cloud technology keeps moving fast, I thought it would be a good idea to see how to set up a MySQL in Amazon , as a service, that is RDS.
Let’s get started then!
What we need is an Amazon subscription that is really easy to get one and there is also a Free Tier. The AWS Free Tier is available to you for 12 months starting with the date on which you create your AWS account. When your free usage expires or if your application use exceeds the free usage tiers, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go service rates.
For the specific session, I had root access. There is also the IAM user. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that helps an administrator securely control access to AWS resources. IAM administrators control who can be authenticated (signed in) and authorized (have permissions) to use Amazon RDS resources.
Once inside the Amazon Subscription, we are seeing the Management Console:
From the Management Console, we are able to identify the RDS service and choose it:
Once inside the RDS service, we click on the Create Database:
From the Databases provided, we are choosing MySQL and Standard Create, as we would like to set up our configuration. With Easy Create enabled, you specify only the DB engine type, DB instance size, and DB instance identifier. Easy Create uses the default setting for other configuration options.
With Easy Create not enabled, you specify more configuration options when you create a database, including ones for availability, security, backups, and maintenance.
Now, on MySQL versions we have chosen the latest provided until now for Amazon, that is 8.0.21 :
If you noticed, there is also the choice to choose Production , Dev or Free Tier template. For Production Template, there are default options for High Availability and consistent performance. We have chosen the Free Tier, as this is for educational purposes.
We have also given a Database Identifier, database-1. Each DB instance has a DB instance identifier. This customer-supplied name uniquely identifies the DB instance when interacting with the Amazon RDS API and AWS CLI commands. The DB instance identifier must be unique for that customer in an AWS Region.
Moving on next are the admin’s credentials, the super user of the database:
The DB instance class determines the computation and memory capacity of an Amazon RDS DB instance. The DB instance class you need depends on your processing power and memory requirements. Apparently, since we are only testing this we have a basic tier:
db.t2 – Instance classes that provide a baseline performance level, with the ability to burst to full CPU usage.
Moving along with the rest of our options:
Amazon RDS provides three storage types: General Purpose SSD (also known as gp2), Provisioned IOPS SSD (also known as io1), and magnetic (also known as standard).
They differ in performance characteristics and price, which means that you can tailor your storage performance and cost to the needs of your database workload.
You can create MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and PostgreSQL RDS DB instances with up to 64 tebibytes (TiB) of storage. You can create SQL Server RDS DB instances with up to 16 TiB of storage. For this amount of storage, use the Provisioned IOPS SSD and General Purpose SSD storage types.
The following list briefly describes the three storage types:
General Purpose SSD – General Purpose SSD volumes offer cost-effective storage that is ideal for a broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver single-digit millisecond latencies and the ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended periods of time. Baseline performance for these volumes is determined by the volume’s size.
Provisioned IOPS – Provisioned IOPS storage is designed to meet the needs of I/O-intensive workloads, particularly database workloads, that require low I/O latency and consistent I/O throughput.
Magnetic – Amazon RDS also supports magnetic storage for backward compatibility. We recommend that you use General Purpose SSD or Provisioned IOPS for any new storage needs. The maximum amount of storage allowed for DB instances on magnetic storage is less than that of the other storage types.
One the Availability & Durability section, you are seeing the option Multi-AZ deployment. Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployments provide enhanced availability and durability for database instances, making them a natural fit for production database workloads. When you provision a Multi-AZ database instance, Amazon RDS synchronously replicates your data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone (AZ).
The next section to check is that on of the Connectivity:
Be certain to choose the correct Virtual private cloud, as it cannot be changed after the database is created and set the proper access (IP-ranges) for your subnets.
Security groups control the access that traffic has in and out of a DB instance. Each VPC security group rule enables a specific source to access a DB instance in a VPC that is associated with that VPC security group. The source can be a range of addresses, or another VPC security group. By specifying a VPC security group as the source, you allow incoming traffic from all instances (typically application servers) that use the source VPC security group.
Moving on next, we have the Database options, we choose the DB name and we have the default parameter group & the option group. We will talk about these in more detail in a few minutes.
The backups sections is pretty straightforward, we may choose automatic ones and there is a retention period from 7 to 35 days.
We can set a specific window for the backups and we may enable the logs that we wish:
Here, we have chosen the error logs and the slow query log.
And now we are ready to create our database:
Please note that once the MySQL RDS is ready, it is the only time we are able to see the connection details and specifically the password, so we need to take a note of this.
Once our database is ready for use, we will see a notification at the top of the page:
Now, remember the default-group that we saw earlier while setting our MySQL RDS? Basically, a DB parameter group acts as a container for engine configuration values that are applied to one or more DB instances.
If you create a DB instance without specifying a DB parameter group, the DB instance uses a default DB parameter group. Each default DB parameter group contains database engine defaults and Amazon RDS system defaults based on the engine, compute class, and allocated storage of the instance. You can’t modify the parameter settings of a default parameter group.
So, if we try to edit the default parameter group, we will receive the following error:
Therefore, if we wish to edit and configure the parameter values, we will need to create a new parameter group and assign it to our database.
Pretty straightforward, we name our parameter group and add a description if we wish:
And we are able to edit it and save the changes:
To apply it on our MySQL instance, we need to modify and set the corresponding parameter group:
We may also modify our backup options and set a window that we didn’t do while creating the MySQL:
On the Events tab, we may see all the actions that have been performed on our instance:
We are also able to check the Recommendations regarding the performance and our queries if we have the enhanced monitoring is enabled:
And last but not least, on the Actions we may create a replica :
To sum up, this is how to set up a MySQL RDS and the options that we have.
Conclusion
We have seen MySQL PaaS on the top Cloud Providers so far and there is definitely much more to see on that department, so stay tuned!
I don’t need a hard disk in my computer if I can get to the server faster… carrying around these non-connected computers is byzantine by comparison.
If you are dealing with data, and you most probably are if you are reading this, one of your biggest fears would be not to be able to retrieve them. In a world where data actually surround us, it is critical to be able to retrieve them fast and with the best consistency.
Thus, it is always a good idea to have high availability settings in place to avoid loosing your data.
However, most of the times, we may wish or we may need to save the database and our data, and be a DBA-hero. Not an easy task, and it may be smoother to just perform a backup-restore. Sadly, this is not always the case.
So, this is what we will be facing in this article, we are going to see what to do when there is a data corruption in MySQL and the steps we need to perform to try saving our database.
Before any task or operation, it is always a good idea to copy the already existing data at an OS level:
First, let’s stop MySQL:
systemctl stop mysqld
And then:
cp -r /datadir/ /backup_db
Before attempting to bring back up MySQL, it is a good idea to execute an innochecksum to see the status of your database or of a specific table.
A few words on innochecksum, in case you are not familiar with it:
innochecksum prints checksums for InnoDB files. This tool reads an InnoDB tablespace file, calculates the checksum for each page, compares the calculated checksum to the stored checksum, and reports mismatches, which indicate damaged pages. It was originally developed to speed up verifying the integrity of tablespace files after power outages but can also be used after file copies. Because checksum mismatches cause InnoDB to deliberately shut down a running server, it may be preferable to use this tool rather than waiting for an in-production server to encounter the damaged pages.
So, in order to check a table, you may use a simple command like:
innochecksum table.ibd --log=/tmp/log.txt
The status will be logged on file /tmp/log.txt, if the file doesn’t exist innochecksum can do this for you. And, the output will be something like the following:
page::41354; log sequence number:first = ; second = Page:: uncorrupted
Innochecksum offers a variety of options, the most useful is to be able to choose a starting or an ending page, to save time:
Please be aware that innochecksum can be executed only on a Database that is not running. Otherwise, you are going to receive a lock error:
Error: Unable to lock file:: table.ibd
fcntl: Resource temporarily unavailable
Once you have checked the tables and discovered the problematic table or tables, it is time to attempt to startup the server and see what we can do. Very important, on my.cnf it is imperative to add the following:
innodb_force_recovery=1
log_error_verbosity=3
log_error_verbosity: The log_error_verbosity system variable specifies the verbosity for handling events intended for the error log. I always prefer to have this set as it is very helpful to identify various issues and at the same time to be able to check the progress on the error_log file.
innodb_force_recovery: The crash recovery mode, typically only changed in serious troubleshooting situations. Possible values are from 0 to 6. If server comes up with a value of 3 and below then the data can be recovered, most probably. Always start with 1 and increase one by one, if the server is not coming up with your previous choice.
Now that we have these settings on our configuration, it is time to start-up the server and hope for the best:
systemctl start mysqld
If we are lucky and the server does manage to come up with a value among 1 to 3, it is time to take a full dump of the table(s) that are corrupted. If you are using 8.0.22 version and above, then you may take the dump via MySQL Shell:
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > util.dumpTables("schema", [ "table" ], "/tmp/dump_table");
Once the backup is completed successfully, it is time to drop the corrupted table:
mysql –uroot –p –execute=”DROP TABLE schema.table”
And then restore it from the dump we have taken:
mysql –uroot –p < table.sql
Once the restoration is done, we need to restart the MySQL server, but this time without the innodb_force_recovery parameter. Simply, edit your configuration file and mark it as a comment:
#innodb_force_recovery=1
Hopefully, this will work and our database will be up and running with all its’ data intact! Unfortunately, this is not always the case and the database won’t be able to come up for us to retrieve our files. In situations like these, we need to restore from an existing backup or from a replica, if they are available.
To avoid facing serious trouble with your data, condider having in place one (or better yet all) of the following:
Full backups ( at a daily,weekly,monthly base)
Incremental backups
Binlog backups
In sync replicas
Innodb cluster
Additionally, in cases of a system crash, it is always helpful to set certain parameters to maintain data consistency. Let’s view the most basic ones:
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 :
Controls the balance between strict ACID compliance for commit operations and higher performance that is possible when commit-related I/O operations are rearranged and done in batches. You can achieve better performance by changing the default value but then you can lose transactions in a crash. The default setting of 1 is required for full ACID compliance. Logs are written and flushed to disk at each transaction commit.
sync_binlog = 1 :
Enables synchronization of the binary log to disk before transactions are committed. This is the safest setting but can have a negative impact on performance due to the increased number of disk writes. In the event of a power failure or operating system crash, transactions that are missing from the binary log are only in a prepared state. This permits the automatic recovery routine to roll back the transactions, which guarantees that no transaction is lost from the binary log.
innodb_doublewrite = 1 :
The doublewrite buffer is a storage area where InnoDB writes pages flushed from the buffer pool before writing the pages to their proper positions in the InnoDB data files. If there is an operating system, storage subsystem, or unexpected mysqld process exit in the middle of a page write, InnoDB can find a good copy of the page from the doublewrite buffer during crash recovery.
relay_log_recovery = 1 :
If enabled, this variable enables automatic relay log recovery immediately following server startup. The recovery process creates a new relay log file, initializes the SQL thread position to this new relay log, and initializes the I/O thread to the SQL thread position. Reading of the relay log from the source then continues.
This global variable is read-only at runtime. Its value can be set with the –relay-log-recovery option at replica server startup, which should be used following an unexpected halt of a replica to ensure that no possibly corrupted relay logs are processed, and must be used in order to guarantee a crash-safe replica.
relay_log_purge = 1 :
Disabling purging of relay logs when enabling the –relay-log-recovery option risks data consistency and is therefore not crash-safe.
innodb_directories :
Another parameter that can assist with corrupted and crash-recovery tablespaces is innodb_directories. Tablespace discovery during crash recovery relies on the innodb_directories setting to identify tablespaces referenced in the redo logs. Innodb_directories can be defined on the start-up and they can be used when moving your tablespaces while the server is offline.
At this point, it is wise to mention that the recovery time is also depended on the innodb_log_file_size.
Generally, the combined size of the log files should be large enough that the server can smooth out peaks and troughs in workload activity, which often means that there is enough redo log space to handle more than an hour of write activity. The larger the value, the less checkpoint flush activity is required in the buffer pool, saving disk I/O.
Larger log files also make crash recovery slower.
Conclusion
MySQL does offer a stability, however it is really hard to avoid a corruption or to not face having your server crashing at some point. If safety measurements are in place, take a deep breath and dive in to save your data.
When you crash and burn, you have to pick yourself up and go on and hope to make up for it.
MySQL Replication is a very common topology, widely used in various architecture. People use it, among others, for High Availability, Read Scalability or Geographic Redundancy.
Another use case is to use MySQL Replication to seamlessly integrate a newer version of the server in your architecture. Let’s say you are running MySQL 5.7 then you can easily setup a 8.0 instance as a replica of your 5.7.
MySQL Replication topology from MySQL Enterprise Monitor
Plan
How to proceed?
Let’s split the problem in sub-parts:
Create a compute & a MDS instances
Create on the source a dedicated user to the replication
Dump the MySQL instance running on the OCI compute for being migrated to MDS
Load the dump in MDS
Create a replication channel on MDS (from OCI to MDS)
Requirement
Before starting, please verify that your source follows the requirements.
Current limitations of MySQL Database Service Inbound Replication
Only Row-based replication supported
Only GTID-based replication is supported
Multi-source replication is not supported
Replication filters are not supported
Changes to the mysql schema are not replicated and cause replication to stop
Source and Replica must run with the same lower_case_table_names to avoid data transfer problems arising from letter case of database or table names in cross-platform topology
The inbound applier runs under the privileges of the DB System’s admin user
You also need to have a running compute instance attached to a public subnet on the same VCN as the MySQL DB System : Creating a Compute Instance
Indeed MySQL 5.7 and MySQL Shell 8.0 are installed on this compute instance : Installing MySQL Shell on Linux. (obviously it works also if you are on Windows).
Create on the source a dedicated user to the replication
Assuming the prerequisites above are fine and the security lists are updated, we can now proceed.
Connect by SSH, to the compute instance where MySQL 5.7 is installed:
ssh -i id_rsa ubuntu@123.45.678.90
Note: If you are using Ubuntu (the case here) the user is ubuntu. For others GNU Linux systems, the user should be opc.
Connect to the MySQL 5.7 instance using MySQL Shell 8.0.23:
$ mysqlsh --version
mysqlsh Ver 8.0.23 for Linux on x86_64 - for MySQL 8.0.23 (MySQL Community Server (GPL))
Then create the replication user with his relevant privileges:
SQL> CREATE USER rplAdmin@'10.0.1.%' IDENTIFIED WITH 'mysql_native_password' BY 'Repl1234c@' REQUIRE SSL;
SQL> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE on *.* to rplAdmin@'10.0.1.%';
We can check the user:
SQL> SELECT user, host, plugin FROM mysql.user WHERE user = 'rplAdmin';
+-----------+----------+-----------------------+
| user | host | plugin |
+-----------+----------+-----------------------+
| rplAdmin | 10.0.1.% | mysql_native_password |
+-----------+----------+-----------------------+
SQL> SHOW GRANTS FOR rplAdmin@'10.0.1.%';
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for rplAdmin@10.0.1.% |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO 'rplAdmin'@'10.0.1.%' |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
Dump the MySQL instance running on OCI for being migrated to MDS
Now we want to put the current MySQL 5.7 data on the MDS instance.
In this context the best tools to do this job are MySQL Shell utilities. We will use the instance dump utility.
The backup output can be stored on a Object Storage Bucket – I will write an article on that. But today, let’s keep it simple. We’ll store the backup locally on the compute instance.
This strategy makes sense if you have enough free disk space on the compute. Also it will be faster to restore the data on MDS with this strategy than having the dump on the object storage.
A good practice when attempting to import data from MySQL 5.7 into MDS is to use MySQL Shell’s upgrade checker utility util.checkForServerUpgrade() to check the schemas and if needed proactively fix any compatibility issues identified.
SQL> \JS
JS> util.checkForServerUpgrade()
We’re good to go, so let’s create the backup directory:
$ mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/backup/
Then dump our MySQL 5.7 instance using util.dumpInstance() :
Cloud computing is becoming more and more famous among the IT circles and it is growing super fast. Industries are charmed by its flexible character and the avoidance of having their own infrastructure. An easy solution that offers automation on every field and they can scale up depending on the needs of each user and company.
At this point, it is important to clarify that we are going to set up MySQL as a Service (PaaS).
So, before starting with the actual Database creation, we need:
An Azure subscription, you may create a free Azure account that offers for the first month a $200 credit and for the first year the most wanted services.
Have an available resource group.
Have specifically access for MySQL.
Let’s sign in to Azure portal, https://portal.azure.com/ and you should see a screen like the following:
We need to verify that we have the correct resources available for our subscription, in order to set up the MySQL DB:
From Azure Portal, go to Subscriptions
Then, on Development Services and choose Resource Provider
Scroll down and check if Microsoft.DBforMySQL is registered
If it is not registered, then click Register on the top left corner:
Once the registration is completed, we are ready for creating our DB.
To create the MySQL Database, we need to choose Azure Database for MySQL Servers:
By clicking the Add option on the top left, we are presented with two options, as it can be shown below:
Single Server is a fully managed database service with minimal requirements for customizations of the database. The single server platform is designed to handle most of the database management functions such as patching, backups, high availability, security with minimal user configuration and control. The architecture is optimized to provide 99.99% availability on single availability zone. Single servers are best suited for cloud native applications designed to handle automated patching without the need for granular control on the patching schedule and custom MySQL configuration settings. MySQL available version is 8.0.15
Flexible Server (Preview) is a fully managed database service designed to provide more granular control and flexibility over database management functions and configuration settings. In general, the service provides more flexibility and server configuration customizations compared to the single server deployment based on the user requirements. The flexible server architecture allows users to opt for high availability within a single availability zone and across multiple availability zones. Flexible servers also provide better cost optimization controls with the ability to start/stop your server and burstable SKUs, ideal for workloads that do not need full compute capacity continuously. MySQL version is 5.7 and 8.0.21 is on trial.
We choose Single Server for our start, and we are presented with the following screen:
We need to set accordingly:
Subscription: Make sure that you have choosen the corresponding subscription
Resource Group: Choose the proper resource group with the correct resources
Server name: This is actually the name of the MySQL Server
Data Source: You may create the new server from a Backup, here we choose none
Location: Choose the proper location that your resource group has access to
Version : Available versions 5.6,5.7 and 8.0
Compute+storage: Choose the best settings, we have Basic , General Purpose and Memory Optimized. The basic differences are among Basic & General Purpose/Memory Optimized.
Basic offers 2 cores and storage up to 1024GB.
General Purpose offers up to 64 cores and storage up to 16384GB.
Memory Optimized offers up to 32 cores and storage up to 16384GB.
All three available configurations offer Backup retention policy up to 35 days (default is 7 days).
General Purpose:
Admin username: Choose the proper name of the DB admin
Password and Confirm Password : Create a strong password for the DB admin
As soon as these settings are ready, we go to the Next:
Additional Settings:
We are able to select encryption:
And then moving on:
Tags : are name/value pairs that enable you to categorize and view consolidated billing by applying the same tag to multiple resources and resource groups. We won’t be organizing our resources with tags now so we are moving on to Review&Create to check the price and the options we have selected:
While our DB is being created, we see its progress:
Once ready, we are able to access the new resource that we created :
From this page, we may stop the server, reset the password , restore/delete and restart.
From the left side-bar, we may create alerts/metrics and to gather information. The server logs are also available on this section, as well as the Replica option in case we need to set up a replica for our environment.
Same for the server settings:
One important note, before we connect officially to our Database. We need to add the proper Firewall Rule to allow our Client to connect to the MySQL instance:
In order to connect to the Database via MySQL Workbench we need to use the Server name on the Hostname as well as the Username, like you may see on the following screenshot:
Finally, we are connected to the Database and we are able to execute any query we wish:
If you wish to delete the Database, Azure will give you a warning that the deletion is irreversible and you will need to provide MySQL Server’s name.
The same concept lies for the Flexible Server, but with a couple of differences:
Here, we need to specify the expected Workload type and based on that the most appropriate settings are being recommended and we also have Zone Redundancy available :
Backups offer the same retention policy as in Single Server:
To be able to connect, we need to set the Firewall Rules, either a specific Public address to access the Flexible MySQL Server or via a Virtual Network:
Flexible Servers offers synchronous replication when Zone Redundancy is enabled, however it does not offer read-only replicas and due to synchronous replication to another availability zone, primary database server can experience elevated write and commit latency.
We need to mention here that if a more updated version of MySQL is needed, then we will need to have a VM created.
Conclusion
Depending on your needs, Cloud computing can for sure serve them and most probably for a fair price. It offers a variety of services, so give it a try!
After all, it is no coincidence that our heads are up in the clouds.
We will be using MySQL Shell version 8.0.22, that is currently the latest and includes extra features.
Let’s start!
On the source database, we connect to mysqlsh:
mysqlsh root@localhost
Please provide the password for 'root@localhost': *******
Save password for 'root@localhost'? [Y]es/[N]o/Ne[v]er (default No): N
MySQL Shell 8.0.22-commercial
Copyright (c) 2016, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Type '\help' or '\?' for help; '\quit' to exit.
Creating a session to 'root@localhost'
Fetching schema names for autocompletion... Press ^C to stop.
Your MySQL connection id is 11 (X protocol)
Server version: 8.0.22-commercial MySQL Enterprise Server - Commercial
No default schema selected; type \use <schema> to set one.
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS >
We may use option \sql or \py to use SQL or Python respectively instead of the JavaScript mode (\js):
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > \sql
Switching to SQL mode... Commands end with ;
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > \py
Switching to Python mode...
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl Py >
For creating the dump we will be using the util.dumpInstance(). Please note that the outputUrl (target directory to store the dump files) must be an empty folder, otherwise you will receive an error like :
util.dumpInstance: Cannot proceed with the dump, the specified directory ‘/’ already exists at the target location / and is not empty. (ArgumentError).
If the folder doesn’t exist mysqlsh is smart enough to create the folder for us:
Now, let’s take a minute to review the options we are using:
dryRun: This won’t dump anything, it will print information on what will be dumped.
ocimds: Enable checks for compatibility with MySQL Database Service (MDS).
threads: How many threads to be used for dumping data chunks from the server.
compatibility: Apply MySQL Database Service compatibility modifications when writing dump files. Supported values: “force_innodb”, “strip_definers”, “strip_restricted_grants”, “strip_tablespaces”.
force_innodb – The MySQL Database Service requires use of the InnoDB storage engine. This option will modify the ENGINE= clause of CREATE TABLE statements that use incompatible storage engines and replace them with InnoDB.
strip_definers – strips the “DEFINER=account” clause from views, routines, events and triggers. The MySQL Database Service requires special privileges to create these objects with a definer other than the user loading the schema. By stripping the DEFINER clause, these objects will be created with that default definer. Views and Routines will additionally have their SQL SECURITY clause changed from DEFINER to INVOKER. This ensures that the access permissions of the account querying or calling them are applied, instead of the user that created them. This should be sufficient for most users, but if your database security model requires that views and routines have more privileges than their invoker, you will need to manually modify the schema before loading it.
strip_restricted_grants – Certain privileges are restricted in the MySQL Database Service. Attempting to create users granting these privileges would fail, so this option allows dumped GRANT statements to be stripped of these privileges.
strip_tablespaces – Tablespaces have some restrictions in the MySQL Database Service. If you’d like to have tables created in their default tablespaces, this option will strip the TABLESPACE= option from CREATE TABLE statements.
As we are using a database that contains other storage engines apart from InnoDB engine, we will be using option force_innodb, along with strip_restricted_grants and strip_definers, as we have routines with DEFINER.
As this moves along, we may open a new connection to our target host, enabling the local_infile parameter so the dump can be imported and at the same time we disable innodb_redo_log as well. Disabling redo logging speeds up data loading by avoiding redo log writes and doublewrite buffering:
mysqlsh back_up@localhost
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > \sql SET GLOBAL local_infile=1;
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > \sql ALTER INSTANCE DISABLE INNODB REDO_LOG;
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > util.loadDump("/data_imp",{threads:4,updateGtidSet:"replace",skipBinlog:true,waitDumpTimeout:1800})
Before proceeding, let’s discuss once again the options we are using:
/data_imp: is where the files will be located.
threads: The number of parallel threads to use to upload chunks of data to the target MySQL instance.
updateGtidSet: Apply the gtid_executed GTID set from the source MySQL instance, as recorded in the dump metadata, to the gtid_purged GTID set on the target MySQL instance.
skipBinlog: Skips binary logging on the target MySQL instance for the sessions used by the utility during the course of the import, by issuing a SET sql_log_bin=0 statement.
waitDumpTimeout: Setting this option activates concurrent loading by specifying a timeout (in seconds) for which the utility waits for further data after all uploaded data chunks in the dump location have been processed.
updateGtidSet is available from 8.0.22 version. If you are using 8.0.21, then you will need to manually set the GTID by locating the gtidExecuted field in the @.json dump file in the dump metadata:
MySQL localhost:33060+ ssl JS > \sql SET @@GLOBAL.gtid_purged= "+gtidExecuted_set";
So, basically we have taken a dump from the source host and at the same time, restore it to the target host. Once it is completed, and as MySQL Shell is really fast we won’t have to wait for that long, we log in to the target host and execute the following command:
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='primary_IP',MASTER_USER='user_to_connect',MASTER_PASSWORD='******', MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1;
START SLAVE;
And our replica is all set.
Apart from the util.dumpInstance(), we also have the options to use util.dumpSchemas() and util.dumpTables(), that was introduced in MySQL Shell 8.0.22, and offers the option for dumping specific schemas, tables or views.
It is also important to mention that the above-mentioned utilities are fully compatible with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Conclusion
MySQL Shell is a really useful tool that offers a variety of functionalities. It is super fast and saves us a lot of time when dealing with broken replication or with data transfer.
Try it, you will love it 🙂
References
Instance Dump Utility, Schema Dump Utility, and Table Dump Utility
In the world of the Databases, one of the most important value that we are all trying to achieve is High Availability. Not to loose our valuable data or in case one server fails to always have another to step in and take control.
So, it is critical to have along with our primary database, other identical instances, the replicas.
On this blog post, we will see the most famous ways to set up our replication.
MySQL offers a variety of options to achieve replication set up. Here we are going to review how to create a replica based on GTID replication by using one of the following methods:
mysqldump
rsync
MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB)
Clone plugin
MySQL Shell, using the utilities, is another method. Please see this article.
Before we initiate any process we need to make sure that on our my.cnf, primary & replica, have set the following parameters:
We will receive the corresponding gtid that is needed for setting up our replica. The backup.sql file should be moved to the replica, a simple scp should do.
Moving along to the replica, we perform the following command:
mysql -u root -p -e "source path/backup.sql"
After this import is completed, we simple need to execute the following:
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='primary_IP' ,MASTER_USER='user_to_connect',MASTER_PASSWORD='******', MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1;
start slave;
If both the above commands are executed with no issue, perform a show slave status\G to verify that both Slave_IO_Running and Slave_SQL_Running are set to yes.
2nd Replication Method – rsync
When using the rsync option, the database on the replica must not be running. And on the primary db we will need to have a lock on the tables. As soon as the tables are locked we may proceed with rsyncing the data.
So:
FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
rsync -axvz /datadir/* root@replica:/datadir
Once the copy is completed, we will need to remove the auto.cnf (as this will give the same UUID and we will not be able to set up our replica) and we will also remove mysql.sock.
The next steps will be to start our database and set it up as a replica:
systemctl start mysqld
mysql -uroot -p
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='primary_IP' ,MASTER_USER='user_to_connect',MASTER_PASSWORD='******', MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1;
start slave;
And of course do not forget to reverse the lock command on the primary:
unlock tables;
3rd Replication Method – MEB
MEB, MySQL Enterprise Backup, is a commercially licensed backup utility for MySQL databases. One of the fastest and easiest way to set up your replication while primary db is up and running.
Please note that the db on the replica should not be running and the corresponding paths should be empty, as this may cause confusion. For example, imagine having forgotten a binlog file and binlog_index to trying to read from erroneous binlogs. This will lead to having the replication broken.
In one command we are sending our data to the replica as well.
Once, this is completed we go into the /tmp folder in the primary node and inside the meta folder, we take note of the command inside the backup_gtid_purged.sql file. This is needed for setting up our replica:
reset slave;
reset master;
set global.gtid_purged=@@ (this is the command inside the backup_gtid_purged.sql)
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='primary_IP' ,MASTER_USER='user_to_connect',MASTER_PASSWORD='******', MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1;
start slave;
Our replica is up and running with no trouble.
4th Replication Method – clone plugin
Last but not least we have the clone method. Clone is initiated at 8.0.17 version and it is a really useful tool.
First thing we need to do is to install the clone plugin on both the primary and wannabe replica as well as the user with the proper grants:
INSTALL PLUGIN clone SONAME 'mysql_clone.so';
CREATE USER clone_user@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'xxxxxx';
GRANT BACKUP_ADMIN, CLONE_ADMIN ON *.* to clone_user@'%';
Verify that plugin is indeed active:
SELECT PLUGIN_NAME, PLUGIN_STATUS FROM information_schema.PLUGINS WHERE PLUGIN_NAME = 'clone';
+-------------+---------------+
| PLUGIN_NAME | PLUGIN_STATUS |
+-------------+---------------+
| clone | ACTIVE |
+-------------+---------------+
And we will also set up our donor on the replica:
SET GLOBAL clone_valid_donor_list = 'Primary_host_IP:port';
Now we need to log in to the replica with the clone_user we created on the above-mentioned steps and execute the following command:
CLONE INSTANCE FROM 'clone_user'@'Primary_host_IP':port IDENTIFIED BY 'xxxxxx';
Once this is completed, we log out from clone_user and log in with root and set up our replica:
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='primary_IP' ,MASTER_USER='user_to_connect',MASTER_PASSWORD='******', MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1;
start slave;
Please note that the master_user that is being used to set up our replica in all the methods needs to have access on our replica and have the replication_slave privilege.
Conclusion
To sum up, MySQL offers a variety of ways to set up tour replication, what you will choose depends on your needs for speed, performance and down time.
MySQL Enterprise Backup provides enterprise-grade backup and recovery for MySQL. It delivers hot, online, non-blocking backups on multiple platforms including Linux, Windows, Mac & Solaris.
Cloud backup is a strategy increasingly used in organizations. Send copies of your data to the cloud, can help you to prevent a devastating IT crisis and ensure business continuity.
Currently, MySQL Enterprise Backup supports the following types of cloud storage services:
Pre-authenticated requests provide a way to let users access a bucket or an object without having their own credentials, as long as the request creator has permissions to access those objects.
You can create, delete, or list pre-authenticated requests using the Console, using the CLI, or by using an SDK to access the API. Click here to see how to create a PAR.
If you use the console, you’ll have something like:
My Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Pre-Authenticated Request name is : MEB-par-bucket-20201203-1612
An URL is generated. It is very important to save it! We’ll use it with MySQL Enterprise Backup.
I can also see my list of PARs in the console:
Create a Cloud Backup on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
I’m using MySQL Enterprise Backup 8.0.22. The extra options to backup your data into OCI Object Storage are:
cloud-service : Cloud service for data backup or restoration. Currently, there are 3 types of cloud storage services supported by mysqlbackup, represented by the following values for the option:
OCI: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage
openstack: OpenStack Swift or compatible object storage services
S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or compatible storage service.
cloud-object : The storage object for the backup image. Note that names of objects within the same bucket have to be unique.
cloud-par-url : The Pre-Authenticated Request (PAR) URL for OCI Object Storage. For a backup to OCI Object Storage, it is the PAR URL for the storage bucket; for restore and other operations on an object stored on OCI, it is the PAR URL for the object.
Click here to find the complete list of cloud storage options (OCI, Amazon S3 & OpenStack Swift options).
$ mysqlbackup --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/my.cnf --backup-dir=/meb-tmp --with-timestamp --backup-image=- --cloud-service=OCI --cloud-par-url=https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/p/JL7k0DnNE8DTV<...snip...>_bucket-20200908-1001/o/ --cloud-object=myBck_20201203-1600.mbi backup-to-image
MySQL Enterprise Backup Ver 8.0.22-commercial for Linux on x86_64 (MySQL Enterprise - Commercial)
Copyright (c) 2003, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
Starting with following command line ...
<... snip ...>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Parameters Summary
-------------------------------------------------------------
Start LSN : 27229330944
End LSN : 27229334048
-------------------------------------------------------------
201203 16:51:48 MAIN INFO: Cloud operation completed.
mysqlbackup completed OK!
Don’t forget the value “–” (dash) for backup-image parameter:
--backup-image=-
The backup is now completed and stored on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object storage bucket.
Restore a Backup from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Again, a Pre-Authenticated Request (PAR) URL for OCI Object Storage will be used. This time we will use a PAR on an object with Read PAR privileges created before the restoration.
Thus in our context, to restore a single-file backup from an OCI Object Storage to a MySQL Server, we will use:
$ mysqlbackup --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/my.cnf --backup-image=- --with-timestamp --backup-dir=/meb-tmp --cloud-service=OCI --cloud-par-url=https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/p/FvbPbq7oJAGP<...snip...>_bucket-20200908-1001/o/myBck_20201203-1600.mbi copy-back-and-apply-log
MySQL Enterprise Backup Ver 8.0.22-commercial for Linux on x86_64 (MySQL Enterprise - Commercial)
Copyright (c) 2003, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
<...snip...>
201208 12:11:27 MAIN INFO: Apply-log operation completed successfully.
201208 12:11:27 MAIN INFO: Full Backup has been restored successfully.
201208 12:11:27 MAIN INFO: Cloud operation completed.
mysqlbackup completed OK! with 4 warnings
The restore is now completed.
As a side note, if you want to see the 4 warnings, take a look at the MEB logfile, located in the –backup-dir, meb-tmp in this article:
$ grep WARNING /meb-tmp/2020-12-08_11-59-58/meta/MEB_2020-12-08.11-59-58.log
201208 11:59:58 MAIN WARNING: If you restore to a server of a different version, the innodb_data_file_path parameter might have a different default. In that case you need to add 'innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:12M:autoextend' to the target server configuration.
201208 11:59:58 MAIN WARNING: If you restore to a server of a different version, the innodb_log_files_in_group parameter might have a different default. In that case you need to add 'innodb_log_files_in_group=2' to the target server configuration.
201208 11:59:58 MAIN WARNING: If you restore to a server of a different version, the innodb_log_file_size parameter might have a different default. In that case you need to add 'innodb_log_file_size=50331648' to the target server configuration.
201208 12:11:27 MAIN WARNING: External plugins list found in meta/backup_content.xml. Please ensure that all plugins are installed in restored server.
Nothing really serious in this context. If you need more information, please click here.
The rest of the story is classic, restart your MySQL instance and you good to go 🙂
One more thing to know and to keep in mind, is that a cloud backup always uses one write thread. In clear backup & restore duration could be much longer than for a local operation.
However, it is a good practice, when possible, to keep a local copy of the backup file.
It is usually easier and much faster to recover from a local location.
MySQL Enterprise Edition
MySQL Enterprise Edition includes the most comprehensive set of advanced features, management tools and technical support to achieve the highest levels of MySQL scalability, security, reliability, and uptime.
It reduces the risk, cost, and complexity in developing, deploying, and managing business-critical MySQL applications.
