Galera Cluster 4 with MariaDB 10.4.8

Last month, by a new customer I had to install the latest version of the MariaDB server: 10.4.8 to setup a Galera Cluster with 3 master nodes.
The good news was that this version was shipped with the latest version of the Galera Plugin from Codership: Galera Cluster 4.0.
As usual, installation & configuration was quitte easy.

$ sudo yum -y install MariaDB-server
$ sudo yum list installed|grep -i mariadb
MariaDB-client.x86_64 10.4.8-1.el7.centos @mariadb-main
MariaDB-common.x86_64 10.4.8-1.el7.centos @mariadb-main
MariaDB-compat.x86_64 10.4.8-1.el7.centos @mariadb-main
MariaDB-server.x86_64 10.4.8-1.el7.centos @mariadb-main
galera.x86_64 26.4.2-1.rhel7.el7.centos @mariadb-main

New Features:

But now I just want to introduce some of the new interesting and high level features available in this version.

Streaming Replication

In the previous versions, when we had large and long-running write transactions, we had always conflicts during
the Certification Based Replication and because of this, often transactions were aborted and rolled back.
Some of our customers were really suffering and complaining because of this problem and limitation.
Now, when there will be a big transaction, the node who initiated the transaction will not have to wait till the “commit”
but will break it into fragments, will certify it and will replicate it on the other master nodes while still the transaction will be running.

New System Tables

When having a look to the mysql database, we can see 3 new system tables.
They are containing informations that are already in status variables but now they will be persistent:

MariaDB [mysql]> show tables from mysql like 'wsrep_%';
+---------------------------+
| Tables_in_mysql (wsrep_%) |
+---------------------------+
| wsrep_cluster             |
| wsrep_cluster_members     |
| wsrep_streaming_log.      |
+---------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.000 sec)

These 3 new tables should bring to the database administrators a better overview of the current status of the cluster.

MariaDB [mysql]> select * from wsrep_cluster;
+--------------------------------------+---------+------------+------------------+--------------+
| cluster_uuid                         | view_id | view_seqno | protocol_version | capabilities |
+--------------------------------------+---------+------------+------------------+--------------+
| 6c41b92b-e0f9-11e8-9924-de3112d0ce21 | 3       | 1967.      | 4.               | 184703       |
+--------------------------------------+---------+------------+------------------+--------------+
1 row in set (0.000 sec)

cluster_uuid is the uuid of the cluster, corresponding to the status variable: wsrep_cluster_state_uuid
view_id is the number of cluster configuration changes, corresponding to the status variable wsrep_cluster_conf_id
view_seqno is the latest Galera sequence number, corresponding to the status variable: wsrep_last_committed
protocol_version is the MariaDB wsrep patch version, corresponding to the status variable: wsrep_protocol_version
capabilities is the capabilities bitmask provided by the Galera library.

MariaDB [mysql]> select * from wsrep_cluster_members;
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------------+
| node_uuid                            | cluster_uuid                         | node_name | node_incoming_address |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------------+
| 6542be69-ffd5-11e9-a2ed-a363df0547d5 | 6c41b92b-e0f9-11e8-9924-de3112d0ce21 | node1     | AUTO                  |
| 6ae6fec5-ffd5-11e9-bb70-da54860baa6d | 6c41b92b-e0f9-11e8-9924-de3112d0ce21 | node2.    | AUTO                  |
| 7054b852-ffd5-11e9-8a45-72b6a9955d28 | 6c41b92b-e0f9-11e8-9924-de3112d0ce21 | node3     | AUTO                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.000 sec)

This system table display the current membership of the cluster.
It contains a row for each node and member in the cluster.
node_uuid is the unique identifier of the master node.
cluster_uuid is the unique identifier of the cluster. It must be the same for all members.
node_name is explicit
node_incoming_address stores the IP address and port for client connections.

MariaDB [mysql]> select * from wsrep_streaming_log;
Empty set (0.000 sec)

This system table will contains rows only if there is a transaction which have the “streaming replication” enabled

Synchronization Functions

This new SQL functions can be used in wsrep synchronization operations.
It is possibble to use them to obtain the GTID (Global Transaction ID)
WSREP_LAST_SEEN_GTID(): returns the GTID of the last write transaction observed by the client
WSREP_LAST_WRITTEN_GTID(): returns the GTID of the last write transaction made by the client
WSREP_SYNC_WAIT_UPTO_GTID(): blocks the client until the node applies and commits the given transaction

Conclusion:

These new features and especially the streaming replication, which is really an improvement and a huge boost to large
transaction support, should bring to users and dba’s satisfaction and hopefully a better opinion of the MariaDB Galera cluster.
In another blog, I will try to demonstrate how this streaming replication works.