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 …

In my previous article, Comparisons of Proxies for MySQL, I showed how MySQL Router was the lesser performing Proxy in the comparison. From that time to now, we had several MySQL releases and, of course, also some new MySQL Router ones.Most importantly, we also had MySQL Router going back to being a level 7 proxy […]

How can we fix a nasty out-of-space issue leveraging the flexibility of Percona Operator for MySQL?

When planning a database deployment, one of the most challenging factors to consider is the amount of space we need to dedicate to data on disk.

This is even more cumbersome when working on bare metal, as it is more difficult to add space when using this kind of solution with respect to the cloud.

When using cloud storage like EBS or similar, it is normally easy(er) to extend volumes, which gives us the luxury to plan the space to allocate for data with a good grade of relaxation. 

Is this also true when using a solution based on Kubernetes like Percona Operator for MySQL? Well, it depends on where you run it. However, if the platform you choose supports the option to extend volumes, K8s per se gives you the …

The microservice architecture is not a new pattern but has become very popular lately for mainly two reasons: cloud computing and containers. That combo helped increase adoption by tackling the two main concerns on every infrastructure: Cost reduction and infrastructure management.

However, all that beauty hides a dark truth:

The hardest part of microservices is the data layer

And that is especially true when it comes to classic relational databases like MySQL. Let’s figure out why that is.

MySQL and the microservice

Following the same two pillars of microservices (cloud computing and containers), what can one do with that in the MySQL space? What do cloud computing and containers bring to the table?

Cloud computing

The magic of the cloud is that it allows you to be cost savvy by letting you easily SCALE UP/SCALE DOWN the size of your instances. No more wasted money on …

There are two Operators at Percona to deploy MySQL on Kubernetes:

• one is based on Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC), production-ready and widely adopted
• another is based on Percona Server for MySQL, now in tech preview and not recommended for production yet

We wrote a blog post in the past explaining the thought process and reasoning behind creating the new Operator for MySQL. The goal for us is to provide production-grade solutions to run MySQL in Kubernetes and support various replication configurations:

• Synchronous replication
  …

Ingress is a resource that is commonly used to expose HTTP(s) services outside of Kubernetes. To have ingress support, you will need an Ingress Controller, which in a nutshell is a proxy. SREs and DevOps love ingress as it provides developers with a self-service to expose their applications. Developers love it as it is simple to use, but at the same time quite flexible.

High-level ingress design looks like this: 

1. Users connect through a single Load Balancer or other Kubernetes service
2. Traffic is routed through Ingress Pod (or Pods for high availability)
   • There are multiple flavors of Ingress Controllers. Some use nginx, some envoy, or other proxies. See a curated list of Ingress Controllers here.
3. Based on HTTP headers traffic is routed …