Having a separate DR cluster for production databases is a modern day requirement or necessity for tech and other related businesses that rely heavily on their database systems. Setting up such a [DC -> DR] topology for Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC), which is a virtually- synchronous cluster, can be a bit challenging in a complex Kubernetes environment.

Here, Percona Operator for MySQL comes in handy, with a minimal number of steps to configure such a topology, which ensures a remote side backup or a disaster recovery solution.

So without taking much time, let’s see how the overall setup and configurations look from a practical standpoint.

PXC Cross-Site/Disaster Recovery

DC Configuration

1) Here we have a three-node PXC cluster running on the DC side.

shell> kubectl get pods -n pxc
NAME                                               READY   STATUS …

You got yourself a Kubernetes cluster and are now testing our Percona Kubernetes Operator for Percona XtraDB Cluster. Everything is working great and you decided that you want to increase the number of Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) pods from the default 3, to let’s say, 5 pods.

It’s just a matter of running the following command:

kubectl patch pxc cluster1 --type='json' -p='[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/pxc/size", "value": 5 }]'

Good, you run the command without issues and now you will have 5 pxc pods! Right? Let’s check out how the pods are being replicated:

kubectl get pods | grep pxc
cluster1-pxc-0                                     1/1     Running   0          25m
cluster1-pxc-1                                     1/1     Running   0          23m
cluster1-pxc-2                                     1/1     Running …