In this two-part blog series, I wanted to cover some failover scenarios with Group Replication. In part one, I will discuss an interesting behavior and performance degradation I discovered while writing these posts. In part two, I will show several failover scenarios and demonstrate how Group Replication handles each situation.

The test environment is very basic, a three-node Group Replication (mysql1,mysql2,myslq3) on MySQL 8.0.19 with default settings. mysql2 is the Primary node.

In this scenario, I was testing a partial network failure when a node gets separated from the primary, but other nodes still can see it.

You would think mysql3 is going to lose quorum and exit the cluster, but no. Inside the cluster, all the nodes are in constant communication with each other, not just …

Percona is happy to announce the experimental release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0. This is a major step for tuning Percona XtraDB Cluster to be more cloud- and user-friendly. This is the second experimental release that combines the updated and feature-rich Galera 4, with substantial improvements made by our development team.

Improvements and New Features in Percona XtraDB Cluster

Galera 4, included in Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0, has many new features. Here is a list of the most essential improvements:

• Streaming replication to support large transactions
• The synchronization functions allow action coordination (wsrep_last_seen_gtid, wsrep_last_written_gtid, wsrep_sync_wait_upto_gtid)
• More granular and improved error logging. wsrep_debug is …

Starting with the experimental release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0, we have made changes to the SST process to make the process more robust and easier to use.

• mysqldump and rsync are no longer supported SST methods.

  Support for mysqldump was deprecated starting with PXC 5.7 and has now been completely removed.

  MySQL 8.0 introduced a new Redo Log format that limited the use of rsync while upgrading from PXC 5.7 to 8.0. In addition, the new Galera-4 also introduced changes that further limits the use of rsync.

  The only supported SST method is xtrabackup-v2.

• A separate Percona XtraBackup installation is no longer required.

  The required …

The problem

In PXC 5.6 and 5.7, when using xtrabackup-v2 as the SST method, the DBA must create a user with the appropriate privileges for use by Percona XtraBackup (PXB). The username and password of this backup user are specified in the wsrep_sst_auth variable.

This is a problem because this username and password was being stored in plaintext and required that the configuration file be secured.

The PXC 8.0 solution

(This feature is still under development and may change before PXC 8.0 GA)

Because the wsrep_sst_auth is only needed on the donor side to take a backup, PXC 8.0 uses an internal user (created specifically for use by PXC) with a randomly generated password. Since this user is only needed on the donor, the plaintext password is not needed on the joiner …

Percona is happy to announce the first experimental binary of Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0 on October 1, 2019. This is a major step for tuning Percona XtraDB Cluster to be more cloud- and user-friendly. This release combines the updated and feature-rich Galera 4, with substantial improvements made by our development team.

Improvements and New Features

Galera 4, included in Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0, has many new features. Here is a list of the most essential improvements:

• Streaming replication supports large transactions
• The synchronization functions allow action coordination (wsrep_last_seen_gtid, wsrep_last_written_gtid, wsrep_sync_wait_upto_gtid)
• More granular and improved error logging. wsrep_debug is now a multi-valued variable to assist in controlling the logging, and logging messages have been significantly improved.
…

Percona is happy to announce the release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.7.27-31.39 on September 18, 2019. Binaries are available from the downloads section or from our software repositories.

Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.7.27-31.39 is now the current release, based on the following:

• Percona Server for MySQL 5.7.27-30
• Codership WSREP API release 5.7.27
• Codership Galera library 3.28

All Percona software is open-source and free.

Bugs Fixed

• PXC-2432: PXC was not …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.6.45-28.36 on September 17, 2019. Binaries are available from the downloads section or from our software repositories.

Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.6.45-28.36 is now the current release, based on the following:

• Percona Server 5.6.45-86.1
• Codership WSREP API release 5.6.44
• Codership Galera library 3.28

All Percona software is open-source and free.

Bugs Fixed

• PXC-2432: PXC was not updating …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.7.26-31.37 on June 26, 2019. Binaries are available from the downloads section or from our software repositories.

Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.7.26-31.37 is now the current release, based on the following:

• Percona Server for MySQL 5.7.26-29
• Codership WSREP API release 5.7.25
• Codership Galera library 3.26

All Percona software is open-source and free.

Bugs Fixed

• PXC-2480: In some …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.6.44-28.34 on June 19, 2019. Binaries are available from the downloads section or from our software repositories.

Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.6.44-28.34 is now the current release, based on the following:

• Percona Server 5.6.44-86.0
• Codership WSREP API release 5.6.43
• Codership Galera library 3.26

All Percona software is open-source and free.

Bugs Fixed

• PXC-2480: In some …

This was not on the radar. I have never been proficient in Galera clusters and related technologies, and thus I hadn’t given much thought to Percona Xtradb Cluster (PXC), until Alkin approached me at FOSDEM, and proposed to extend dbdeployer features to support PXC. He mentioned that many support engineers at Percona use dbdeployer) on a daily basis and that the addition of PXC would be welcome.

I could not follow up much during the conference, but we agreed on …