Why MariaDB Server with Galera Cluster 10.11, you might ask? Well, there are plenty of Galera Cluster improvements that one might consider, and know that it rolls up with features that we have been contributing in the rolling short-term releases from 10.7/10.8/10.9/10.10. So, MariaDB Server 10.11 is a long-term support release which means you get maintenance up till February 2028 (a whole 3 more years).

One exciting feature that we covered is the fact that you can use the wsrep_allowlist, which stores the allowed IP addresses that can perform an IST/SST, in a comma delimited format. Before the introduction of wsrep_allowlist, as long as a node has access to Galera Cluster’s TCP ports, it an make an SST/IST request, without authentication being performed; some users prefer to have a method to make this more robust, and secure, hence with wsrep_allowlist only if the JOINER node is in the IP list, will it be allowed to join the cluster. We actually wrote about this before, with a step-by-step guide MariaDB Galera Cluster – the wsrep allowlist, and many will be pleased to note that it arrived first in MariaDB Server, which is also present since MySQL-wsrep 8.4.2-26.20.

Progress reporting is all the rage, especially if you’re wanting to know how long an IST or SST is going to take, right? Why not have it available in a JSON file (wsrep_status.json) that you a human, or an external monitoring tool can parse? After all, the server is fully initialised, but inaccessible by the client, during the IST/SST, an the only source of information is thus the error.log which isn’t that friendly to parse. This is actually what helps power Galera Manager.

We hope that these particular Galera Cluster centric features are good enough for you to consider the upgrade to MariaDB Server 10.11, which we think is a good LTS. Next up, we will cover MariaDB Server 11.4, the next LTS release.

Don’t forget, we also have a MariaDB Galera Cluster webinar coming up on 19 February 2025!