MariaDB by VSHN

MariaDB, managed by VSHN for you.

MariaDB Server is one of the most popular open source relational databases. It’s made by the original developers of MySQL and guaranteed to stay open source. It is part of most cloud offerings and the default in most Linux distributions.

It is built upon the values of performance, stability, and openness, and MariaDB Foundation ensures contributions will be accepted on technical merit. Recent new functionality includes advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility features with Oracle Database and Temporal Data Tables, allowing one to query the data as it stood at any point in the past.

— MariaDB Website

The user documentation is available under docs.appcat.ch.

Availability of the service

APPUiO Cloud on cloudscale.ch Zones
APPUiO Managed OpenShift

Features

Available sizing	1 or 3 replicas
No downtime during Maintenance	^[1]
Multiple logical databases per instance
Multiple users per instance
Super-user access
Maximum supported size of database	500 GiB ^[2]
Data encryption at rest	^[3]
Guaranteed performance	^[3]
High availability	^[1]
Support	(see Support Plans)

Available sizing

1 or 3 replicas

No downtime during Maintenance

^[1]

Multiple logical databases per instance

Multiple users per instance

Super-user access

Maximum supported size of database

500 GiB ^[2]

Data encryption at rest

^[3]

Guaranteed performance

^[3]

High availability

^[1]

Support

(see Support Plans)

The following common features are available as well:

Self-Service Instance Provisioning and Configuration	Service instances can be self-service ordered and are provisioned fully automated in the background. Access to self-service provisioning is provided via custom Kubernetes configuration objects in the Kubernetes cluster or via Open Service Broker API (on request).
Best-Practice Configuration Management	Services are configured with best practices and the configuration is updated continuously as we learn improvements during day-2 operations and from the community. Industry standards are used for security configuration and wherever possible TLS encrypted connections are offered by default.
Maintenance and Security Operations	Patch updates are applied as they get available. We monitor security information for services and apply zero-day patches or workaround configuration as they become available.
Data Protection and Recovery	All services offer a regular backup option. See the service descriptions for more details.
Service Metrics	Performance metrics are collected regularly and are available as graphs to the user. The metrics are automatically monitored and acted upon irregularities, see Monitoring and Alerting below.
Monitoring and Alerting	Service Level Indicators are monitored and alerted upon. Depending on the service level alerts are automatically handled by a VSHNeer.
Service Logging	All logs are collected and are available to debug service errors.
Support by VSHN or Vendor	Support for all services are available from VSHN support engineers. Depending on the service, additional support by the software vendor or a third-party might be available.

Self-Service Instance Provisioning and Configuration

Service instances can be self-service ordered and are provisioned fully automated in the background. Access to self-service provisioning is provided via custom Kubernetes configuration objects in the Kubernetes cluster or via Open Service Broker API (on request).

Best-Practice Configuration Management

Services are configured with best practices and the configuration is updated continuously as we learn improvements during day-2 operations and from the community. Industry standards are used for security configuration and wherever possible TLS encrypted connections are offered by default.

Maintenance and Security Operations

Patch updates are applied as they get available. We monitor security information for services and apply zero-day patches or workaround configuration as they become available.

Data Protection and Recovery

All services offer a regular backup option. See the service descriptions for more details.

Service Metrics

Performance metrics are collected regularly and are available as graphs to the user. The metrics are automatically monitored and acted upon irregularities, see Monitoring and Alerting below.

Monitoring and Alerting

Service Level Indicators are monitored and alerted upon. Depending on the service level alerts are automatically handled by a VSHNeer.

Service Logging

All logs are collected and are available to debug service errors.

Support by VSHN or Vendor

Support for all services are available from VSHN support engineers. Depending on the service, additional support by the software vendor or a third-party might be available.

Supported versions

Supported versions:

Version	EOL
MariaDB 11.2	21 November 2024
MariaDB 11.1	21 August 2024
MariaDB 11.0	06 June 2024
MariaDB 10.11 (LTS)	16 February 2028
MariaDB 10.6 (LTS)	06 July 2026
MariaDB 10.5	24 June 2025
MariaDB 10.4	18 June 2024

Version

EOL

MariaDB 11.2

21 November 2024

MariaDB 11.1

21 August 2024

MariaDB 11.0

06 June 2024

MariaDB 10.11 (LTS)

16 February 2028

MariaDB 10.6 (LTS)

06 July 2026

MariaDB 10.5

24 June 2025

MariaDB 10.4

18 June 2024

See MariaDB general release maintenance periods for more information. Once a version isn’t supported anymore by the upstream project, we’ll stop supporting the version as well.

Upgrade Policy

Minor and major updates are done manually by the service user. Meanwhile, patch upgrades are done automatically during maintenance. The following upgrade policy support applies:

We only support a version as long as it’s supported upstream.
3 months before the support ends ("Final Release") the grace period starts, and you’re urged to upgrade to a supported version.
Once the support for a service has ended, the service is considered "unmanaged" by VSHN. Meanwhile, the service still continues to run.

An unmanaged service is a service that is not monitored and SLA doesn’t apply anymore.

Service Level Indicator (SLI)

MariaDB responds to probes (a SQL query) from within the same cluster. The service is considered up, if the SQL query succeeds.

Please refer to Service Levels for further information about service levels. Also, check out "What does SLI / SLA / SLO mean?" for more information about these terms.

Incident Prevention

The capacity of any given instance is monitored. If a threshold is reached, an automated alert is generated to an alert channel of the customer’s choice.

The configured storage volume is in danger to run full
The remaining available connections are in danger to run out
The memory is in danger to run low

Data Protection

Backups can be configured per instance.

By default, backups happen at a random time each day and 6 backups are kept. This schedule and the retention are configurable.

Backups are provided by K8up and are not encrypted at rest.

Recurring Maintenance

We conduct recurring maintenance tasks on the service to keep it stable and up-to-date.

Planned Maintenance Activities

Updating of the base container image with the latest patched version, this causes a service restart.
If there’s a newer minor version available that does not contain breaking changes, then the service will automatically be updated to that minor version.
Major upgrades are not automatic.
Configuration improvements as we learn new best-practices or some configuration proved to be non-optimal.

Mandatory Maintenance Activities

Security issue (CVE) mitigation by updating to a patched version or configuration adjustments, usually causes service restart.
Regular maintenance on the underlying platform, usually causing up to 2 restarts per replica.

Maintenance Windows

This is an automated recurrence once a week. The day and time can be configured per service instance, whereas by default it is a random time in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Users responsibilities

As a DevOps company, we believe in its collaborative approach. Flawless service is only possible through a sense of responsibility on both sides. Accordingly, we rely on the user to consider the following points:

Choose reasonably sized resources for the software consuming the service
Act early when an increase of service usage is foreseen (for example increase resources)
Rely on best-practices for using the service
Choose a matching service level for your use-case

Behind the scenes

This service is provided by Bitnami package for Bitnami package for MariaDB Galera. Service instances are running on the same Kubernetes cluster as the service instance was ordered in.