This document discusses how Vitess can be used to shard MariaDB databases. Vitess is an open-source database clustering system that enables horizontal scaling of MySQL and MariaDB. It provides a control plane that includes a proxy server, orchestration tools, and supports sharding schemes. While Vitess supports MariaDB 10.3, more work is needed for full compatibility. The presentation demonstrates Vitess architecture and how it can route queries to different database shards in a transparent manner.

1. How to shard MariaDB like
Pro?
Alkin Tezuysal
PlanetScale
FOSDEM Feb 2021

2. About me
Sr. Technical Manager at PlanetScale
Maintainer for Vitess
Open source database evangelist previously at Percona,
Pythian and others with Enterprise Background
Born to Sail, Forced to Work!
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3. Founded Feb. 2018 by co-creators of Vitess
~45 employees
HQ Mountain View, remote team
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4. Vitess
A database clustering system for horizontal scaling of
MySQL / MariaDB
● CNCF graduated project
● Open source, Apache 2.0 licence
● Contributors from around the community
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5. Agenda
Vitess architecture overview
Vitess use cases and sharding
Vitess meets MariaDB 10.3
● Local Docker Install
● Kubernetes Operator
● Build
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6. Vitess architecture basics
How the Vitess architecture enables transparent
database infrastructure operations
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7. Glossary
● Keyspace: Logical database (sharded)
○ Keyspace ID
○ Primary Vindex
○ Vindex
● VTGate: Proxy server
● VTTablet : Backend server
● Topology : Configuration server (etcd,
zookeper)
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8. Vitess architecture basics
Consider a common replication cluster
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9. Vitess architecture basics
Each MySQL server is assigned a vttablet
- A daemon/sidecar
- Controls the mysqld process
- Interacts with the mysqld server
- Typically on same host as mysqld
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10. Vitess architecture basics
In production you have multiple clusters
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11. Vitess architecture basics
User and application traffic is routed via
vtgate
- A smart, stateless proxy
- Speaks the MySQL protocol
- Impersonates as a monolith MySQL
server
- Relays queries to vttablets
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12. Vitess architecture basics
A vitess deployment will run multiple
vtgate servers for scale out
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13. Vitess architecture basics
vtgate must transparently route queries
to correct clusters, to relevant shards
app
app
commerce
shard 0
commerce
shard 1
internal
unsharded
?
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14. Vitess architecture basics
Queries route based on schema & sharding scheme
app
app
commerce
shard 0
commerce
shard 1
internal
unsharded
USE
SELECT
FROM
WHERE 4
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15. Vitess architecture basics
topo: distributed key/value store
- Stores the state of vitess: schemas,
shards, sharding scheme, tablets,
roles, etc.
- etcd/consul/zookeeper
- Small dataset, mostly cached by
vtgate
commerce
shard 0
commerce
shard 1
internal
unsharded
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16. vtctld: control daemon
- Runs ad hoc operations
- API server
- Reads/writes topo
- Uses locks
- Operates on tablets
Vitess architecture basics
commerce
shard 0
commerce
shard 1
internal
unsharded
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17. Vitess knows
Vitess keeps known schemas, shards, clusters,
server roles, all in topo
It keeps a state
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18. Vitess Controlplane Includes
● Proxy server (vtgate)
● Managed Backup and Recovery (xtrabackup)
● Integrated failover (a.k.a Orchestrator/vtorc)
● Sharding Schemes (Horizontal)
● Advanced Replication (Vreplication,Vstream)
● Online DDL (gh-ost, pt-osc)
● And more
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19. Vitess architecture summary
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20. Supported Backend Databases
● MySQL 5.7 / 8.0
● MariaDB 10.3
● Postgresql
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21. Vitess Use Cases and Sharding
● Part or entire application scaling
● Management of existing MySQL topology
● Sharding and resharding
● Minimizing backup/recovery scenarios

22. MariaDB Compatibility 10.3
● No extensive work has been done
● Looking for contributors and users
● Feedback is valuable to enhance project
● 10.4 compatibility is pending #issue

23. Resources
Docs: vitess.io/docs/
Code: github.com/vitessio/vitess
Slack: vitess.slack.com
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24. DEMO and Q/A
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25. Thank you!
Questions?
github.com/askdba
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