Simple Sharding with Two Servers

Sharding is the method of splitting a single database server into separate parts. This tutorial describes a very simple way of sharding. Each schema is located on a different database server and MariaDB MaxScale's schemarouter module is used to combine them into a single database server.

MariaDB MaxScale will appear to the client as a database server with the combination of all the schemas in all the configured servers.

Environment & Solution Space

This document is designed as a simple tutorial on schema-based sharding using MariaDB MaxScale in an environment in which you have two servers. The object of this tutorial is to have a system that, to the client side, acts like a single MySQL database but actually is sharded between the two servers.

The process of setting and configuring MariaDB MaxScale will be covered within this document. The installation and configuration of the MySQL servers will not be covered in-depth. The users should be configured according to the configuration guide.

This tutorial will assume the user is running from one of the binary distributions available and has installed this in the default location. Building from source code in GitHub is covered in guides elsewhere as is installing to non-default locations.

Process

The steps involved in creating a system from the binary distribution of MariaDB MaxScale are:

• Install the package relevant to your distribution

• Create the required users on your MariaDB or MySQL server

• Create a MariaDB MaxScale configuration file

Installation

The precise installation process will vary from one distribution to another details of what to do with the RPM and DEB packages can be found on the download site when you select the distribution you are downloading from. The process involves setting up your package manager to include the MariaDB repositories and then running the package manager for your distribution, RPM or apt-get.

Upon successful completion of the installation command you will have MariaDB MaxScale installed and ready to be run but without a configuration. You must create a configuration file before you first run MariaDB MaxScale.

Creating Your MariaDB MaxScale Configuration

The first step in the creation of your maxscale.cnf file is to define the global maxscale section. This section configures the number of threads MariaDB MaxScale uses. A good rule of thumb is to use at most as may threads as you have CPUs. MariaDB MaxScale uses few threads for internal operations so one or two threads less than the maximum should be enough.

[maxscale]
threads=8

After this we configure two servers we will use to shard our database. The accounts_east server will hold one schema and the accounts_west will hold another schema. We will use these two servers to create our sharded database.

[accounts_east]
type=server
address=192.168.56.102
port=3306

[accounts_west]
type=server
address=192.168.122.85
port=3306

The next step is to configure the service which the users connect to. This section defines which router to use, which servers to connect to and the credentials to use. The router we use in this tutorial is the schemarouter.

[Sharded Service]
type=service
router=schemarouter
servers=accounts_west,accounts_east
user=sharduser
passwd=YqztlYGDvZ8tVMe3GUm9XCwQi

After this we configure a listener for the service. The listener is the actual port the user connects to. We will use the port 4000.

[Sharded Service Listener]
type=listener
service=Sharded Service
protocol=MySQLClient
port=4000

The final step is to configure a monitor which will monitor the state of the servers. The monitor will notify MariaDB MaxScale if the servers are down. We add the two servers to the monitor, define the credentials to use and we set the monitoring cycle interval.

[MySQL Monitor]
type=monitor
module=mysqlmon
servers=accounts_west,accounts_east
user=monitoruser
passwd=7SP1Zcsow8TG+9EkEBVEbaKa
monitor_interval=1000

After this we have a fully working configuration and we can move on to starting MariaDB MaxScale.

Starting MariaDB MaxScale

Upon completion of the configuration process MariaDB MaxScale is ready to be started . This may either be done manually by running the maxscale command or via the service interface. The service scripts are located in the /etc/init.d/ folder and are accessible through both the service and systemctl commands.

After starting MariaDB MaxScale check the error log in /var/log/maxscale to see if any errors are detected in the configuration file. Also the maxadmin command may be used to confirm that MariaDB MaxScale is running and the services, listeners etc have been correctly configured.

MariaDB MaxScale is now ready to start accepting client connections and routing them. Queries are routed to the right servers based on the database they target and switching between the shards is seamless since MariaDB MaxScale keeps the session state intact between servers.