7.5.8 InnoDB Cluster and Binary Log Purging

In MySQL 8, the binary log is automatically purged (as defined by binlog_expire_logs_seconds). This means that a cluster which has been running for a longer time than binlog_expire_logs_seconds could eventually not contain an instance with a complete binary log that contains all of the transactions applied by the instances. This could result in instances needing to be provisioned automatically, for example using MySQL Enterprise Backup, before they could join the cluster. Instances running 8.0.17 and later support the MySQL Clone plugin, which resolves this issue by providing an automatic provisioning solution which does not rely on incremental recovery, see Section 7.4.6, “Using MySQL Clone with InnoDB Cluster”. Instances running a version earlier than 8.0.17 only support incremental recovery, and the result is that, depending on which version of MySQL the instance is running, instances might have to be provisioned automatically. Otherwise operations which rely on distributed recovery, such as Cluster.addInstance() and so on might fail.

On instances running earlier versions of MySQL the following rules are used for binary log purging:

• Instances running a version earlier than 8.0.1 have no automatic binary log purging because the default value of expire_logs_days is 0.

• Instances running a version later than 8.0.1 but earlier than 8.0.4 purge the binary log after 30 days because the default value of expire_logs_days is 30.

• Instances running a version later than 8.0.10 purge the binary log after 30 days because the default value of binlog_expire_logs_seconds is 2592000 and the default value of expire_logs_days is 0.

Note

expire_logs_days was removed in MySQL Server 8.2.0.

Thus, depending on how long the cluster has been running binary logs could have been purged and you might have to provision instances manually. Similarly, if you manually purged binary logs you could encounter the same situation. Therefore you are strongly advised to upgrade to a version of MySQL later than 8.0.17 to take full advantage of the automatic provisioning provided by MySQL Clone for distributed recovery, and to minimize downtime while provisioning instances for your InnoDB Cluster.