Aurora cluster promises a high availability solution and seamless failover procedure. However, how much is actually the downtime when a failover happens? And how proxySQL can help in minimizing the downtime ? A little sneak peek on the results ProxySQL achieves up to 25x less downtime and the impressive up to ~9800x less errors during unplanned failovers. How proxySQL achieves this: 

1. Less downtime
2. “Queueing” feature when an instance in a hostgroup becomes unavailable.

So what is ProxySQL? ProxySQL is a middle layer between the database and the application. ProxySQL protects databases from high traffic spikes, prevents databases from having high number of connections due to the multiplexing feature and minimizes the impact during planned/unexpected failovers or crashes of DBs. 

This blog will continue with measuring the impact of an unexpected …

ProxySQL 2.3.0 was recently released and when I was reading the release notes, I was really impressed with the Group Replication enhancements and features. I thought of experimenting with those things and was interested to write a blog about them. Here, I have focused on the following two topics:

• When the replication lag threshold is reached, ProxySQL will move the server to SHUNNED state, instead of moving them to OFFLINE hostgroup. When shunning a server, it will be performed gracefully and not immediately drop all backend connections.
• The servers can be taken to maintenance through ProxySQL using “OFFLINE_SOFT”.

Test Environment

To test this, I have configured a three-node GR cluster (gr1,gr2,gr3) in my local environment. I have configured a single primary cluster (1 writer, 2 readers).

mysql> select member_host,member_state,member_role,member_version from …

There are plenty of ways to run ProxySQL in Kubernetes (K8S). For example, we can deploy sidecar containers on the application pods, or run a dedicated ProxySQL service with its own pods.

We are going to discuss the latter approach, which is more likely to be used when dealing with a large number of application pods. Remember each ProxySQL instance runs a number of checks against the database backends. These checks monitor things like server-status and replication lag. Having too many proxies can cause significant overhead.

Creating a Cluster

For the purpose of this example, I am going to deploy a test cluster in GKE. We need to follow these steps:

1. Create a cluster

gcloud container clusters create ivan-cluster --preemptible --project my-project --zone us-central1-c --machine-type n2-standard-4 --num-nodes=3

2. Configure command-line access

gcloud …

Starting with the release of proxysql-admin 2.0.15,  the proxysql-admin 2.x series can now encrypt the credentials needed to access proxysql and cluster nodes. This only applies to the proxysql-admin configuration, this does not change the ProxySQL config, so those credentials are still unencrypted.

The credentials file is the unencrypted file containing the usernames, passwords, hostnames, and ports needed to connect to ProxySQL and PXC (Percona XtraDB Cluster).

The proxysql-login-file tool is used to encrypt the credentials file. This encrypted file is known as a login-file. This login-file can then be used by the proxysql-admin and proxysql-status scripts.

Note: This feature requires OpenSSL v1.1.1 and above (with the exception of Ubuntu 16.04). Please see the …

We are proud to announce the latest release of ProxySQL version 2.2.0

ProxySQL is a high performance, high availability, protocol aware proxy for MySQL, with a GPL license! It can be downloaded from the ProxySQL Repository (instructions here) or for a Docker image check out the Official ProxySQL Docker Repository. ProxySQL is freely usable and accessible according to the GNU GPL v3.0 license.

Release Overview Highlights

ProxySQL v2.2.0 is a minor release comprising of backward compatible changes, enhancements and bug fixes. Going forward ProxySQL will be using the common versioning standard “Major.Minor.Patch” and so this is essentially the first minor release of the 2.1 branch and inclues many fixes and features that were added to the 2.0 branches …

We are proud to announce the latest release of ProxySQL version 2.1.1 on the 21st of April 2021

ProxySQL is a high performance, high availability, protocol aware proxy for MySQL, with a GPL license! It can be downloaded from the ProxySQL Repository (instructions here) or for a Docker image check out the Official ProxySQL Docker Repository. ProxySQL is freely usable and accessible according to the GNU GPL v3.0 license.

Release Overview Highlights

ProxySQL v2.1.1 is a patch release comprising of minor backward compatible changes and bug fixes. This release is the first patch release of the 2.1 branch and inclues many fixes and features that were introduced in the 2.0.x branches after 2.1 was released.

Be sure to try out the ProxySQL …

We are proud to announce the latest release of ProxySQL version 2.0.18 on the 8th of April 2021

ProxySQL is a high performance, high availability, protocol aware proxy for MySQL, with a GPL license! It can be downloaded from the ProxySQL Repository (instructions here) or for a Docker image check out the Official ProxySQL Docker Repository. ProxySQL is freely usable and accessible according to the GNU GPL v3.0 license.

Release Overview Highlights

ProxySQL v2.0.18 is a patch release comprising of minor backward compatible changes and bug fixes.

• Note: ProxySQL v2.1.0 remains the latest stable GA release.

Be sure to try out the ProxySQL 2.0.18 release and …

ProxySQL is proud to announce the latest release of ProxySQL version 2.0.17 on the 9th of February 2021

ProxySQL is a high performance, high availability, protocol aware proxy for MySQL, with a GPL license! It can be downloaded here or alternatively from the ProxySQL Repository, or the Docker image available on our Official ProxySQL Docker Repository.  ProxySQL is freely usable and accessible according to the GNU GPL v3.0 license.

Release Overview Highlights

ProxySQL v2.0.17 is a patch release comprising of minor backward compatible changes and bug fixes. 

Be sure to try out the new ProxySQL 2.0.17 release and …

There are several ways to deploy ProxySQL between your applications and the database servers. A common approach is to have a floating virtual IP (VIP) managed by keepalived as the application endpoint. The proxies have to be strategically provisioned to improve the resiliency of the solution (different hardware, network segments, etc,).

When we consider cloud environments, spreading instances across many availability zones (AZ) is considered a best practice, but that presents a problem regarding VIP handling.

Per definition, VPC subnets have to be created in a specific AZ, and subnet IP ranges can’t overlap with one another. An IP address cannot simply be moved to an instance on a different AZ, as it would end up in a subnet that doesn’t include it.

So in order to use the VIP method, we …

ProxySQL is proud to announce the latest release of ProxySQL version 2.0.16 on the 26th of January 2021

ProxySQL is a high performance, high availability, protocol aware proxy for MySQL, with a GPL license! It can be downloaded here or alternatively from the ProxySQL Repository, or the Docker image available on our Official ProxySQL Docker Repository.  ProxySQL is freely usable and accessible according to the GNU GPL v3.0 license.

Release Overview Highlights

ProxySQL v2.0.16 is a patch release comprising of minor backward compatible changes and bug fixes. This release brings several fixes to ProxySQL’s Native Galera monitor, AWS Aurora and connection handling.

…