7.5.6 Configuring the Parallel Replication Applier

Instances support and enable parallel replication applier threads, sometimes referred to as a multi-threaded replica. Using multiple replica applier threads in parallel improves the throughput of both the replication applier and incremental recovery.

This means that on instances running 8.0.23 and later, the following system variables must be configured:

• binlog_transaction_dependency_tracking=WRITESET

  Note

  This system variable is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.35 and 8.2.0 and was removed in MySQL 8.4.0. As of MySQL 8.4.0, the server uses the WRITESET behavior by default and it is no longer set by MySQL Shell.

• slave_preserve_commit_order=ON

• slave_parallel_type=LOGICAL_CLOCK

By default, the number of applier threads (configured by the slave_parallel_workers system variable) is set to 4.

When you upgrade a cluster that has been running a version of MySQL server and MySQL Shell earlier than 8.0.23, the instances are not configured to use the parallel replication applier. If the parallel applier is not enabled, the output of the Cluster.status() operation shows a message in the instanceErrors field, for example:

...
"instanceErrors": [
	"NOTE: The required parallel-appliers settings are not enabled on 
		the instance. Use dba.configureInstance() to fix it."
...

In this situation you should reconfigure your instances, so that they use the parallel replication applier. For each instance that belongs to the InnoDB Cluster, update the configuration by issuing dba.configureInstance(instance). Note that usually dba.configureInstance() is used before adding the instance to a cluster, but in this special case there is no need to remove the instance and the configuration change is made while it is online.

Information about the parallel replication applier is displayed in the output of the Cluster.status(extended=1) operation. For example, if the parallel replication applier is enabled, then the topology section output for the instance shows the number of threads under applierWorkerThreads. The system variables configured for the parallel replication applier are shown in the output of the Cluster.options() operation.

Important

The server system variable slave_parallel_workers (deprecated in MySQL 8.0.30) is removed in 8.3.0 and can not be set or read by MySQL Shell's applierWorkerThreads option for MySQL Server 8.3.0 or higher.

For earlier versions of MySQL Server, the behavior of MySQL Shell is unchanged and applierWorkerThreads is still available.

You can configure the number of threads which an instance uses for the parallel replication applier with the applierWorkerThreads option, which defaults to 4 threads. The option accepts integers in the range of 0 to 1024 and can only be used with the dba.configureInstance() and dba.configureReplicaSetInstance() operations. For example, to use 8 threads, issue:

mysql-js> dba.configureInstance(instance, {applierWorkerThreads: 8, restart: true})

Note

The change to the number of threads used by the parallel replication applier only occurs after the instance is restarted and has rejoined the cluster.

To disable the parallel replication applier, set the applierWorkerThreads option to 0.