6.6 Finding the Primary

When you are working with a single-primary InnoDB Cluster or an InnoDB ReplicaSet, you need to connect to the primary instance for administration tasks so that configuration changes are written to the metadata. To find the current primary you can:

• Use the --redirect-primary option at MySQL Shell start up to ensure that the target server is part of an InnoDB Cluster or InnoDB ReplicaSet. If the target instance is not the primary, MySQL Shell finds the primary and connects to it.

• Use the shell.connectToPrimary([instance, password]) operation (added in version 8.0.20), which checks whether the target instance belongs to a cluster or ReplicaSet. If so, MySQL Shell opens a new session to the primary, sets the active global MySQL Shell session to the established session and returns it.

  If an instance is not provided, the operation attempts to use the active global MySQL Shell session. If an instance is not provided and there is no active global MySQL Shell session, an exception is thrown. If the target instance does not belong to a cluster or ReplicaSet the operation fails with an error.

• Use the status operation, find the primary in the result, and manually connect to that instance.