Alternative to MySQL

[chunkyen]

Looks like it is all Doom and Gloom for MySQL https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/23/mysql_post_oracle/.
All my testing has been done with MySQL. So does the community recommends using MariaDB as Cloudstack datastore? Any pitfalls to look out for?
Supporting Postgres would be more future proof IMHO.

[bradh352]

I've been running mariadb (with galera cluster) in production for a while now without issue (after banging my head against the wall with failures for a bit).

The main configuration that solved everything for me was:

character-set-server           = utf8mb4
collation-server               = utf8mb4_general_ci
character_set_collations='utf8mb4=utf8mb4_general_ci'
skip-character-set-client-handshake

I've never had to tweak character sets and collations before for any app, I'm guessing it has something to do with some schema settings that cloudstack sets. I didn't look deep into the cloudstack side to see if there would be any schema tweaks that would be less dependent on server-side settings. The current recommended collation is utf8mb4_uca1400_ai_ci for mariadb, but that doesn't work.

[TadiosAbebe]

@bradh352 I am also running galera cluster in my environment, but i don't remember setting or changing the above configurations manually. What failures were you facing before tweaking the configuration?

[bradh352]

I'd get random failures clicking through the UI all about collation issues. That was months ago on Cloudstack 4.20 I think. Its always been MariaDB 11.4 though.

Guess I should ask what version of MariaDB you're running...

[TadiosAbebe]

We are on Mariadb 10.11.13

[bradh352]

Maybe that version was less strict or defaulted to something closer to mysql. Its still an LTS release that's got a couple of years left on it so if it works well, its a good option.

Realistically someone should probably test all 3 MariaDB LTS versions that are still supported (10.11, 11.4, 11.8) and document compatibility and possibly required configuration changes for those versions.

[chunkyen]

Looks like we will have to face the reality of moving to MariaDB. Has anyone done a CloudStack MySQL to MariaDB migration before?

[bradh352]

If you're on a MySQL version prior to v8, you can just uninstall mysql and install MariaDB and run the standard mysql_upgrade (err, mariadb_upgrade) command.

But if you're on version 8, you have to do a full dump / reload due to incompatible on-disk formats. I haven't gone through this process for cloudstack, but assuming your database isn't too large its not a big deal.

[jgotteswinter]

We are using Percona XtraDB Cluster, but i can also recommend the Percona MySQL. Happy user for many many years.