MySQL 8.0 Features Galore: DevOps

DevOps is a movement in the IT industry that is meant to align IT and enterprise needs. At Datavail, we are committed to efficient systems, and we are part of this incredible movement. Undoubtedly, DevOps is becoming a trend across enterprises as it increases collaboration and interaction opportunities between developers and operation managers (end-users). DevOps leverage culture, automation, measurement and sharing to bring together people from development and operations.

MySQL 8.0 comes with prime functionalities that ease the development, testing, deployment and administration of your database infrastructure. You can now import JSON to MySQL via the MySQL Shell allowing you to connect relation and non-relational data without having to worry of incompatibility issues. With these new features, service outage, and disruption is minimized.

InnoDB Cluster

InnoDB Cluster is designed to make high availability easier to set up, use and maintain. It is a win for DevOps as 8.0 offers automatic node provisioning, improved and simplified internal recovery accounts management, automatic handling of cross-version policies and improved cluster status information. This addition utilizes X AdminAPI via the MySQL Shell. It combines capabilities of the Admin API, Group Replication, and the MySQL Router12 to bolster high availability and read scalability. AdminAPI has been configured to allow fast and easy interactions with InnoDB Cluster. The use of Group Replication automates the process of managing groups.

The introduction of built-in Clone support in MySQL and its integration in Group Replication overcomes the limitations of asynchronous replication channels. The Clone Plugin enables taking physical snapshots of databases which, are then transferred over the network to provision servers. For Developers and operation managers, remote cloning without any external tooling is a crucial feature of 8.0. Also, MySQL 8.0 supports mixing various versions of MySQL Server on the same cluster to foster optimal performance and compatibility. As a DBA, you will have to run checks on cross-version policies beforehand to promote optimal usability. Otherwise, you might encounter errors during upgrades on downgrades of cluster components.

With InnoDB Cluster, developers can create, deploy, and configure servers using the MySQL Shell. As a result, you can use Python, SQL or JavaScript via MySQL Shell to administer an InnoDB cluster. The default cluster setup runs in single-primary mode, implying that it has a single server that handles read and write queries. Version 8.0 allows you to identify which primary member you would like the algorithm to decide when the first single primary mode fails. Therefore, as a DBA 8.0 provides you the chance to define which member of a cluster shall be elected as next primary as well as designate which order priorities come first. InnoDB Cluster is set to give advanced controls and improved capabilities to power users.

Automation

Version 8.0 fosters automation of various processes such as installations, upgrades and configurations across deployment tools like Ansible, Puppet and Chef. During automation processes, DBAs have to take care of binaries installations and upgrades, database configuration, schemas, replication, database-related cronjobs, database credentials and privileges, as well as, DB documentation.

MySQL 8.0 allows developers to automate reproducible deployment in MySQL cloud, repositories, MySQL Snappy, MySQL Roles, and MySQL official docker images. Maintenance operations that can be automated include X DevAPI, MySQL Shell, persistent variables and online DLLs. The new MySQL enables over-the-network install and upgrade services across multiple architectures and GNU/Linux distributions. Such environments include RHEL, Fedora, RPMs for Oracle Linux and CentOS, as well as, DEB for UBUNTU and Debian. Moreover, online DLLs give you a smooth deployment free from interruptions.

Other DevOps Features

Often DevOps have to replicate data from one source to another. MySQL 8.0 replication capabilities are on another new level. MySQL 8.0 supports external tools that will enable you to replicate data from heterogeneous sources.

The manual installation process is time-consuming. Assuming you have 10 Linux Servers that need the new version of MySQL 8.0, the process can demand a lot of time, energy and money resources. With the new DB system, you can use external tools like Ansible, yum or apt-get to upgrade your servers to the latest versions. DevOps tools for database management like Amazon RDS, Kintone, MongoDB Atlas, Amazon Aurora etc. can be used alongside MySQL 8.0 offering developers and operators a plethora of performance and compatibility options.

Final Thoughts

There’s really something for everyone when it comes to MySQL 8.0 and DevOps is no exception. MySQL continues to remain at the forefront of the industry as the most popular open-source relational database and it’s clear that 8.0 sets the standard in database management. If you’re looking to upgrade from 5.7 to 8.0 or need expert advice, contact us today.