Migrating Mission-Critical MySQL / MariaDB to the Cloud

Migrating to the cloud with zero downtime is a problem that companies running mission-critical applications have to solve, but not on their own. If you’re running MySQL, MariaDB, or Percona MySQL it can be easy. Many of our customers have done this successfully, simplifying their overall cloud migration process by making the database layer easy to move. It’s one less thing to worry about.

Migrating Composite Clusters

If you have a Composite Cluster such as CAA, DAA, or CAP, all you have to do is:

1. establish connectivity to the Cloud you want to migrate to
2. create a new cluster as part of the composite global cluster, and
3. provision the nodes from your existing cluster so that the data exists in the Cloud.

It’s actually very simple to create a Cloud presence with a composite Tungsten cluster. Note that this is a high-level overview of the steps, and every mission-critical process should be approached with care. At this point, you now have a composite cluster with one local cluster running on-prem and the newly added cluster running in the Cloud, like this:

If you’re running a hybrid-cloud deployment, then your work is done.

Otherwise, the next step is to decommission the on-prem clusters whenever you’re ready to rely on your new Cloud deployment. And that completes your zero-downtime migration to the Cloud!

Migrating Non-Composite Clusters

If you are running a non-composite Tungsten Cluster topology (ie. not managed across multiple clusters), then you have a few options for zero-downtime migration.

You may set up a Tungsten Replicator pipeline, extracting from your on-prem cluster and applying to your new Cloud infrastructure. This is a pretty simple process, and it’s actually similar to the migration process from another solution, such as Galera Cluster (view the blog or webinar of this process for more information).

Another approach which might be more suitable depending on your environment and requirements, is to simply convert to a Composite cluster; this procedure is outlined in the Docs and also described in this excellent blog post.

Continuent offers best practices for Cloud migration via our 24/7 mission-critical Support. Simply reach out and let us know you’re planning to migrate, so we can assist with the planning stage up front, saving lots of energy down the line.

Tungsten is ideal for any infrastructure - Amazon AWS, Google GCP, Microsoft Azure, or any other - as long as you’re running Linux / Unix on your nodes. As mentioned above, the Continuent Support team has done zero-downtime Cloud migrations numerous times, so we’d love for you to reach out and let us help you design and create a plan.

If you’re not a Continuent customer, but you’re looking for a way to migrate your mission-critical MySQL, MariaDB or Percona MySQL to the Cloud, we look forward to hearing from you and assessing if Tungsten Clustering is the right solution for your requirements and environment!