Happy 2025, it is a fresh year, and there have been plenty of resources to help you gain the most out of your Galera Cluster (be it on MySQL or MariaDB Server) and Galera Manager deployments, so here is a quick “best practices” guide.
- Did you know that in under 15 minutes, you can Deploy MariaDB Galera Cluster to AWS EC2 instances only with Galera Manager? This allows you not just to deploy, but also to monitor your Galera Cluster.
- It is a similar deal, when it comes to using Galera Manager to deploy a MariaDB Galera Cluster on-premises – all complete in under 15 minutes.
- Why not actually grasp all the best practices for managing a Galera Cluster? Watch Mastering Galera Cluster, Best Practices and New Features. Learn about how to handle AUTO_INCREMENT, using Galera Cluster across WANs (i.e. multiple data centers), some innovative features like XA transaction support, encrypted GCache, and more!
- If you happen to want to have all the top tips from 2024 on gaining the most performance from your MariaDB Galera Cluster, look no further than our top tips video.
We also do have a Kubernetes Helm chart available for you now. Releases are on GitHub, for easy deployment, and naturally we have a blog explaining how to use it.
If you are stuck with MySQL 5.7, note that it is wise to upgrade to MySQL 8.0 with Galera Cluster, as we also have released MySQL 8.4. Take MySQL 8.4.3 LTS for a spin, as this was the first release that we consider “GA” ready.
We also have MySQL Galera Enterprise with Galera Cluster, and there are some cool features there like XA transaction support, and also the Non-Blocking Operations (NBO) method for an online schema change. Who doesn’t love less downtime during an online schema change? Not just for Galera Enterprise users, we also do have streaming replication, allowing you to have transactions larger than 2GB within the MariaDB Galera Cluster; while we also have features called the wsrep_allowlist to ensure that there are only some IPs that can perform an IST/SST.
And if you’ve graduated from Galera Load Balancer (GLB), and want a full-featured Level 7 proxy that understands the SQL protocol, don’t forget to try out MariaDB MaxScale, and we wrote an article about it too: MariaDB Galera Cluster with MariaDB MaxScale – Getting Started with Read Write Split.
So to recap:
- use MySQL 8.0 (we made many releases in 2024, and will continue to support it in 2025)
- upgrade from MySQL 5.7 if you are still on it (this can be either to MySQL 8.0, 8.4, or for some even to MariaDB Galera Cluster)
- try out MySQL 8.4, we have releases that we consider are ready for you
- we do have a bit more in Galera Cluster Enterprise Edition (EE)
- try out our Kubernetes Helm chart for deployments within Kubernetes
- use Galera Manager, which keeps on getting better, e.g. November 2024 release now with Infrastructure Profiles
- join one of our training classes, and don’t forget we do many webinars to help you gain the most out of your deployments
Happy Galera Clustering in 2025!