Using VMware SQL with MySQL for Tanzu Application Service for multi-site replication

This topic provides instructions for developers using the VMware SQL with MySQL for Tanzu Application Service for replication across multiple foundations or data centers.

You provision a leader-follower service instance across two foundations using the Multi‑Site Replication topology. This leader-follower service instance comprises two single node instances that are configured for replication.

The Multi‑Site Replication plan type is configured separately from the leader-follower service plan.

For more information about the Multi‑Site Replication topology, see About Multi‑Site Replication.

Prerequisites

Before you use VMware SQL with MySQL for TAS across multiple foundations, you must have:

Access to the Multi‑Site Replication plan. Your operator configures this plan and enables access to it in your org and space.
Selected two foundations to deploy your Multi‑Site Replication leader and follower VMs. Your operators must configure these foundations for multi‑site replication. For more information configuring a Multi‑Site Replication topology, see Preparing for Multi‑Site Replication.

Multi-site replication usage overview

To create a multi-site replication configuration across multiple foundations:

Check the availability of the Multi‑Site Replication plan in the Marketplace in both your foundations. See Confirm the VMware SQL with MySQL for Tanzu Application Service service availability.
Create a service instance on each foundation: A leader of your selected topology on your primary foundation, and a follower of type Multi‑Site Replication on your secondary foundation. See Create multi-site replication service instances.
Configure replication from your leader to your follower service instances. See Configure multi-site replication.
Bind the multi-site configured service instances to your apps. See Bind a multi-site configured service instance to your app.
Modify your app to use the multi-site configured service instances. See Use the MySQL service in your app.

After you configure your multi-site service instances, you can manage them over the life cycle of your apps and data. For instructions on how to manage a VMware SQL with MySQL for TAS service instance, see Manage service instances.

Create multi-site service instances in your two foundations

Create one service instance in your primary foundation to act as the replication leader. Create a second service instance in your secondary foundation (usually your disaster recovery site) to serve as the replication follower. Later sections establish the replication between these two service instances.

Check the availability of the Multi‑Site Replication plan in the Marketplace in both your foundations. See Confirm the VMware SQL with MySQL for Tanzu Application Service service availability.
In your primary foundation, create a leader service instance:
1. Log in to the deployment for your primary foundation by running:
```
cf login PRIMARY-API-URL
```
  Where PRIMARY-API-URL is the API endpoint for the primary foundation.
2. Create a primary service instance by running:
```
cf create-service p.mysql PLAN PRIMARY-INSTANCE
```
  Where:
  - PLAN is the name of the Multi‑Site Replication plan you want your leader to use.
  - PRIMARY-INSTANCE is a name you choose to identify the service instance. This name appears under service in output from cf services.
  For example:
```
$ cf create-service p.mysql db-small primary-db

Creating service primary-db in org my-org / space my-space as admin...
OK
```
  Do not name your service instance leader or follower. If you trigger a failover or switchover, the service instances in your primary and secondary foundations switch roles. For more information, see Triggering multi-site replication failover and switchover.
3. (Optional) Watch the progress of the service instance creation by running:
```
watch cf services
```
  Wait for the last operation for your instance to show as create succeeded.
  
  For example:
```
$ watch cf services

Getting services in org my-org / space my-space as admin...
OK
name           service       plan        bound apps    last operation
primary-db     p.mysql       db-small                  create succeeded
```
  If you get an error, see Troubleshooting instances.
Create a follower Multi‑Site Replication service instance in your secondary foundation by repeating step 1, replacing references to primary with secondary, and selecting a Multi‑Site Replication plan within your secondary foundation.

Configure multi-site by using the mysql-tools plug-in

To reduce the complexity of configuring multi-site instance replication, VMware SQL with MySQL for TAS offers the mysql-tools plug-in to the cf CLI. This plug-in automates some of the manual steps documented in the later section Configure multi-site manually. The resulting configurations are functionally identical.

To configure multi-site replication across multiple foundations with mysql-tools, install the latest version of the mysql-tools cf CLI plug-in. For more information about the mysql-tools cf CLI plug-in, see mysql-cli-plugin in GitHub.

Caution
This procedure assumes you are using cf CLI v8 or later. Earlier cf CLI versions are not compatible with the latest mysql-tools plug-in release.

Important The mysql-tools setup-replication command requires cf CLI v8. For more information, see [Upgrading to cf CLI v8](https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/cf-cli/v8.html) in the Cloud Foundry documentation.

To configure multi-site replication across foundations with mysql-tools:

Save cloudfoundry targeting information for the primary foundation.
Save cloudfoundry targeting information for the secondary foundation.
Use mysql-tools to automatically establish replication between your instances in your primary and secondary foundations.
Create a leader service instance in your primary foundation and follower in your secondary foundation if you have not already done so.

For more information, see Create multi-site service instances in your two foundations.
Save the cf config to target your primary foundation:
1. Log in to the deployment for your primary foundation by running:
```
cf login PRIMARY-API-URL
```
  Where PRIMARY-API-URL is the API endpoint for the primary foundation.
2. Use mysql-tools to save the config
```
cf mysql-tools save-target PRIMARY-TARGET-NAME
```
  Where PRIMARY-TARGET-NAME is your chosen name for the primary foundation.
Save the cf config to target your secondary foundation:
1. Log in to the deployment for your secondary foundation by running:
```
cf login SECONDARY-API-URL
```
  Where SECONDARY-API-URL is the API endpoint for the primary foundation.
2. Use mysql-tools to save the config
```
cf mysql-tools save-target SECONDARY-TARGET-NAME
```
  Where SECONDARY-TARGET-NAME is your chosen name for the secondary foundation.
Use mysql-tools to configure replication between the primary and secondary foundations.
```
cf mysql-tools setup-replication --primary-target PRIMARY-TARGET-NAME --primary-instance PRIMARY-INSTANCE \
  --secondary-target SECONDARY-TARGET-NAME --secondary-instance SECONDARY-INSTANCE
```
Where:
- PRIMARY-TARGET-NAME is your chosen name for the primary foundation.
- PRIMARY-INSTANCE is your chosen name for the primary instance.
- SECONDARY-TARGET-NAME is your chosen name for the secondary foundation.
- SECONDARY-INSTANCE is your chosen name for the secondary instance.
Notes:
- The mysql-tools plug-in has shorthand flags for the preceding options. Type cf mysql-tools setup-replication for a help message listing the options.
- This step redeploys both your leader and follower instances. Multi‑Site Replication instances experience downtime during these redeploys.
- The entire process can take several minutes or longer to complete, depending on your selected service instances and foundation configurations.
- This step leverages tokens from your preceding foundation cf login commands, and therefore should be launched within minutes of performing those logins before those tokens expire.

The plug-in output shows status lines showing checkpoints for the various configuration steps:

Validating the primary instance: 'primary-db'.
Validating the secondary instance: 'secondary-db'.
Creating a 'host-info' service-key: 'MSHostInfo-1705540659' on the secondary instance: 'secondary-db'.
Getting the 'host-info' service-key from the secondary instance: 'secondary-db'.
Updating the primary with the secondary's 'host-info' service-key: 'MSHostInfo-1705540659'.
Creating a 'credentials' service-key: 'MSCredInfo-1705541348' on the primary instance: 'primary-db'.
Getting the 'credentials' service-key from the primary instance. 'primary-db'.
Updating the secondary instance with the primary's 'credentials' service-key: 'MSCredInfo-1705541348'.

Purge cf config information from your workstation:

cf mysql-tools remove-target PRIMARY-TARGET-NAME
cf mysql-tools remove-target SECONDARY-TARGET-NAME

Configure multi-site manually

You can manually establish replication between your two foundations. You might want to do this to avoid briefly saving Cloud Foundry targeting information, or to control the names of the service keys used to establish replication. When the manual steps are properly executed, the resulting configuration is functionally identical to one created by the mysql-tools plug-in.

Steps to configure multi-site replication manually

After you create your service instances in primary and secondary foundations, you must configure replication between the two service instances.

You configure replication using service keys to pass connection information between the leader and follower service instances. You must not use these service keys for any other use besides establishing multi-site replication.

Workflow for configuring multi-site replication

The following diagram describes the workflow for configuring multi-site replication:

alt-text=Two boxes labeled Secondary Foundation and Primary Foundation with 6 steps shown. Steps 1, 2, 6 are in Secondary Foundation, Steps 3, 4, and 5 are in Primary Foundation.

The steps shown in the diagram are as follows:

Create host-info service key.
Record host-info service key.
Update secondary service instance with host-info service key.
Create credentials service key.
Record credentials service key.
Update primary service instance with credentials service key.

Procedure for configuring multi-site replication

The following procedure assumes you created the leader service instance in the primary foundation and the follower service instance in the secondary foundation. You created these service instances in Create multi-site replication service instances.

Create a host-info service key for the service instance in your secondary foundation by running:
```
cf create-service-key SECONDARY-INSTANCE SERVICE-KEY \
  -c '{"replication-request": "host-info"}'
```
Where:
- SECONDARY-INSTANCE is the name of the follower service instance you created in step 2 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
- SERVICE-KEY is a name you choose for the host-info service key.
For example:
```
$ cf create-service-key secondary-db host-info \
       -c '{"replication-request": "host-info" }'

    Creating service key host-info for service instance secondary-db as admin...
    OK
```

View the replication-credentials for your host-info service key by running:

cf service-key SECONDARY-INSTANCE SERVICE-KEY

Where:

SECONDARY-INSTANCE is the name of the follower service instance you created in step 2 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
SERVICE-KEY is the name of the host-info service key you created in step 1.

For example:

$ cf service-key secondary-db host-info-key 

Getting key host-info-key for service instance secondary-db as admin...

  {
    "credentials": {
        "replication": {
            "peer-info": {
              "hostname": "6497378d-f518-4922-92d5-9530d3dc634a.mysql.service.internal",
              "ip": "10.0.19.12",
              "system_domain": "sys.secondary-domain.com",
              "uuid": "6497378d-f518-4922-92d5-9530d3dc634a"
          },
          "role": "leader"
        }
    }
  }

Caution
This procedure assumes you are using cf CLI v8 or later. Earlier cf CLI versions do not include the top-level credentials JSON key in their cf service-key response.

Record the output of the previous command, and remove the top-level credentials key.
Log in to the deployment for your primary foundation by running:
```
cf login PRIMARY-API-URL
```

Update your primary service instance with the host-info service key by running:

cf update-service PRIMARY-INSTANCE -c HOST-INFO

Where:

PRIMARY-INSTANCE is the name of the primary service instance you created in step 1 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
HOST-INFO is the output you recorded in step 3.

For example:

$ cf update-service primary-db -c '{
"replication":{ \
  "peer-info":{
      "hostname": "6497378d-f518-4922-92d5-9530d3dc634a.mysql.service.internal",
      "ip": "10.0.18.12",
      "system_domain": "sys.secondary-domain.com",
      "uuid": "6497378d-f518-4922-92d5-9530d3dc634a"
    },
  "role": "leader"
  }
}'

Updating service instance primary-db as admin...
OK

Watch the progress of the service instance by running:

watch cf services

Wait for the last operation for your instance to show as update succeeded.

For example:

$ watch cf services

Getting services in org my-org / space my-space as admin...
OK
name           service       plan        bound apps    last operation
primary-db     p.mysql       db-small                  update succeeded

If you get an error, see Troubleshooting instances.

Create a credentials service key for the leader service instance in your primary foundation by running:
```
cf create-service-key PRIMARY-INSTANCE SERVICE-KEY-NAME \
  -c '{"replication-request": "credentials"}'
```
Where:
- PRIMARY-INSTANCE is the name of the leader service instance you created in step 1 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
- SERVICE-KEY-NAME is a name you choose for the credentials service key.
(The -c flag is different than the flag used in step 1.)

For example:
```
$ cf create-service-key primary-db cred-key \
      -c '{"replication-request": "credentials" }' 

  Creating service key cred-key for service instance primary-db as admin...
  OK
```

View the replication-credentials for your credentials service key by running:

cf service-key PRIMARY-INSTANCE SERVICE-KEY-NAME

Where:

PRIMARY-INSTANCE is the name of the leader service instance you created in step 1 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
SERVICE-KEY-NAME is the name of the credentials service key you created in step 6.

For example:

$ cf service-key primary-db cred-key 

Getting key cred-key for service instance primary as admin...

  {
    "credentials": {
      "replication": {
        "credentials": {
          "password": "a22aaa2a2a2aaaaa",
          "username": "6bf07ae455a14064a9073cec8696366c"
        },
        "peer-info": {
          "hostname": "878f5fb3-fcc5-43cd-8c1f-3018e9f277ad.mysql.service.internal",
          "ip": "10.0.17.12",
          "ports": {
              "agent":  8443,
              "backup": 8081,   
              "mysql":  3306
           },
          "system_domain": "sys.primary-domain.com",
          "uuid": "878f5fb3-fcc5-43cd-8c1f-3018e9f277ad"
        },
        "role": "follower"
      }
    }
  }

Caution
This procedure assumes you are using cf CLI v8 or later. Earlier cf CLI versions do not include the top-level credentials JSON key in their cf service-key response.

Record the output of the previous command and remove the top-level credentials JSON key. The resulting JSON is your “credentials service key”.
Log in to the deployment for your secondary foundation by running:
```
cf login SECONDARY-API-URL
```

Update your follower service instance with the credentials service key by running:

cf update-service SECONDARY-INSTANCE -c CREDENTIALS

Where:

SECONDARY-INSTANCE is name of the secondary service instance you created in step 2 of Create multi-site replication service instances.
CREDENTIALS is the output you recorded in step 9.

For example:

$ cf update-service secondary-db -c '{"replication": {
    "credentials": {
      "password": "a22aaa2a2a2aaaaa",
      "username": "6bf07ae455a14064a9073cec8696366c"
    },
    "peer-info": {
      "hostname": "878f5fb3-fcc5-43cd-8c1f-3018e9f277ad.mysql.service.internal",
      "ip": "10.0.17.12",
      "ports": {
        "agent":  8443,
        "backup": 8081,   
        "mysql":  3306
       },
      "system_domain": "sys.primary-domain.com",
      "uuid": "878f5fb3-fcc5-43cd-8c1f-3018e9f277ad"
    },
    "role": "follower"
  }
}'

Updating service instance primary-db as admin...
OK

You now have a multi-site configuration with replication enabled.

Upgrade a multi-site configuration

When upgrading the service instances used in a multi-site configuration, it is important to upgrade in a specific order: Follower first, then leader. This ensures that any incompatibilities between different multi-site MySQL versions are handled correctly.

Bind a multi-site configured service instance to your app

For an app to use a multi-site configuration, you must bind your app to your leader service instance in your primary foundation. If you want to use an active-active topology, you must additionally bind your app to the follower service instance in your secondary foundation.

For information about active-passive and app-layer active-active topologies, see see About active-passive topology and About appp-layer active-active topology.

To bind an app to a leader service instance:

Log in to the deployment for your primary foundation by running:
```
cf login PRIMARY-API-URL
```
Bind your app to your primary service instance by doing the procedure in Bind a service instance to your app.
(Optional) If you are using an active-active topology, you must bind the same app to your follower service instance in your secondary foundation. To do this, repeat the previous steps and replace references to primary with secondary.
Modify your app to use the VMware SQL with MySQL for TAS service by using the procedure in Use the MySQL service in your app.