# MariaDB Monitor

Up until MariaDB MaxScale 2.2.0, this monitor was called _MySQL Monitor_.

## Overview

The MariaDB Monitor monitors a Master-Slave replication cluster. It monitors the
state of the backends and assigns server roles such as master and slave, which
are used by the routers when deciding where to route a query. It can also modify
the replication cluster by performing failover, switchover and rejoin. Backend
server versions older than MariaDB/MySQL 5.5 are not supported.

## Master selection

Only one backend can be master at any given time. When a master has been
selected, the monitor prefers to stick with the choice even if other potential
masters are available. Only if the current master is clearly unsuitable does the
monitor try to select another master. An existing master turns invalid if:

1. It is unwritable (*read_only* is on).
2. It has been down for more than *failcount* monitor passes and automatic
failover is disabled.
3. It did not previously replicate from another server in the cluster but it
is now replicating.
4. It was previously part of a multimaster group but is no longer, or the
multimaster group is replicating from a server not in the group.

Cases 1 and 2 cover the situations in which the master server is indeed invalid
and can no longer act as master. Cases 3 and 4 are less severe, as in these
cases the topology has changed significantly and the master should be
re-selected, but the current master may still be the best choice.

The master change described above is not the same as the failover described in
the section
[Failover, switchover and auto-rejoin](#failover,-switchover-and-auto-rejoin).
A master change only modifies the server roles inside MaxScale but does not
modify the replication topology. For this reason case 2 requires automatic
failover to be off.

Master selection prefers to select the server with the most slaves, possibly in
multiple replication layers. A master must also be running (successfully
connected) and *read_only* must be off. Servers in a cyclical replication
topology (multimaster group) are interpreted as having all the servers in the
group as slaves. Even from a multimaster group only one server is selected as
the overall master. When multiple servers are tied for master status, the server
which appears earlier in the `servers`-field of the monitor is selected.

## Configuration

A minimal configuration for a  monitor requires a set of servers for monitoring
and a username and a password to connect to these servers.

```
[MyMonitor]
type=monitor
module=mariadbmon
servers=server1,server2,server3
user=myuser
passwd=mypwd
```

From MaxScale 2.2.1 onwards, the module name is `mariadbmon` instead of
`mysqlmon`. The old name can still be used.

The `user` requires the REPLICATION CLIENT privilege to successfully monitor the
state of the servers. SUPER privilege is required for cluster manipulation
features such as failover.

```
MariaDB [(none)]> grant replication client on *.* to 'maxscale'@'maxscalehost';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
```

## Common Monitor Parameters

For a list of optional parameters that all monitors support, read the
[Monitor Common](Monitor-Common.md) document.

## MariaDB Monitor optional parameters

These are optional parameters specific to the MariaDB Monitor.

### `detect_replication_lag`

A boolean value which controls if replication lag between the master and the
slaves is monitored. This allows the routers to route read queries to only
slaves that are up to date. Default value for this parameter is _false_.

To measure the replication lag, MaxScale uses the
*maxscale_schema.replication_heartbeat* table. This table is created on the
master server and it is updated at every heartbeat with the current timestamp.
The updates are then replicated to the slave servers and when the replicated
timestamp is read from the slave servers, the lag between the slave and the
master is calculated.

The monitor user requires INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and SELECT permissions on the
*maxscale_schema.replication_heartbeat* table and CREATE permissions on the
maxscale_schema database. The monitor creates the database and the table if they
do not exist.

### `detect_stale_master`

Allow previous master to be available even in case of stopped or misconfigured
replication.

Starting from MaxScale 2.0.0 this feature is enabled by default. It is disabled
by default in MaxScale 1.4.3 and below.

This allows services that depend on master and slave roles to continue
functioning as long as the master server is available. This is a situation
which can happen if all slave servers are unreachable or the replication
breaks for some reason.

```
detect_stale_master=true
```

### `detect_stale_slave`

Treat running slaves servers without a master server as valid slave servers.

This feature is enabled by default.

If a slave server loses its master server, the replication is considered broken.
With this parameter, slaves that have lost their master but have been slaves of
a master server can retain their slave status even without a master. This means
that when a slave loses its master, it can still be used for reads.

If this feature is disabled, a server is considered a valid slave if and only if
it has a running master server monitored by this monitor.

```
detect_stale_slave=true
```

### `mysql51_replication`

Deprecated and unused as of MaxScale 2.3. Can be defined but is ignored.

### `multimaster`

Deprecated and unused as of MaxScale 2.3. Can be defined but is ignored.

### `ignore_external_masters`

Ignore any servers that are not monitored by this monitor but are a part of the
replication topology. This option was added in MaxScale 2.1.12 and is disabled
by default.

MaxScale detects if a master server replicates from an external server. When
this is detected, the server is assigned the `Slave` and `Slave of External
Server` labels and will be treated as a slave server. Most of the time this
topology is used when MaxScale is used for read scale-out without master
servers, a Galera cluster with read replicas being a prime example of this
setup. Sometimes this is not the desired behavior and the external master server
should be ignored. Most of the time this is due to multi-source replication.

When this option is enabled, all servers that have the `Master, Slave, Slave of
External Server, Running` labels will instead get the `Master, Running` labels.

### `detect_standalone_master`

Detect standalone master servers. This feature takes a boolean parameter and is
enabled by default.

This setting controls whether a standalone server can be a master. A standalone
server is a server from which no other server in the cluster is attempting to
replicate from. In most cases this should be left on.

### `failcount`

Number of consecutive monitor passes a master server must be down before it is
considered failed. At this point, automatic failover is performed if enabled
(`auto_failover=true`). If automatic failover is not on, the monitor will try to
search for another server to fultill the master role. See section
[Master selection](#master-selection)
for more details. Changing the master may break replication as queries could be
routed to a server without previous events. To prevent this, avoid having
multiple valid master servers in the cluster.

The default value is 5 failures.

### `allow_cluster_recovery`

Deprecated and unused as of MaxScale 2.3. Can be defined but is ignored.

### `enforce_read_only_slaves`

This feature is disabled by default. If set to ON, the monitor attempts to set
the server `read_only` flag to ON on any slave server with `read_only` OFF. The
flag is checked at every monitor iteration. The monitor user requires the
SUPER-privilege for this feature to work. While the `read_only`-flag is ON, only
users with the SUPER-privilege can write to the backend server. If temporary
write access is required, this feature should be disabled before attempting to
disable `read_only`. Otherwise the monitor would quickly re-enable it.

### `switchover_on_low_disk_space`

This feature is disabled by default. If set to `on`, when the disk space of a
server is exhausted, it will cause the server to be put in maintenance mode.
If the server is the current master, then a switchover will also be triggered.

In order for this parameter to have any effect, `disk_space_threshold` must
have been specified for the
[server](../Getting-Started/Configuration-Guide.md#disk_space_threshold)
or the [monitor](./Monitor-Common.md#disk_space_threshold), and
[disk_space_check_interval](./Monitor-Common.md#disk_space_check_interval)
for the monitor.
```
switchover_on_low_disk_space=true
```
Note that once the server has been put in maintenance mode, the disk space
situation will no longer be monitored and the server will thus not automatically
be taken out of maintanance mode even if disk space again would become available.

### `maintenance_on_low_disk_space`

This feature is enabled by default. If a running server that is not the master
or a relay master is out of disk space (as defined by the general monitor
setting `disk_space_threshold`) the server is set to maintenance mode. Such
servers are not used for router sessions and are ignored when performing a
failover or other cluster modification operation.

## Failover, switchover and auto-rejoin

Starting with MaxScale 2.2.1, MariaDB Monitor supports replication cluster
modification. The operations implemented are: _failover_ (replacing a failed
master), _switchover_ (swapping a slave with a running master) and _rejoin_
(joining a standalone server to the cluster). The features and the parameters
controlling them are presented in this section.

These features require that the monitor user (`user`) has the SUPER and RELOAD privileges.
In addition, the monitor needs to know which username and password a slave
should use when starting replication. These are given in `replication_user` and
`replication_password`.

All three operations can be activated manually through MaxAdmin/MaxCtrl. All
commands require the monitor instance name as first parameter. Failover selects
the new master server automatically and does not require additional parameters.
Rejoin requires the name of the joining server as second parameter.

Switchover takes one to three parameters. If only the monitor name is given,
switchover will autoselect both the slave to promote and the current master. If
two parameters are given, the second parameter is interpreted as the slave to
promote. If three parameters are given, the third parameter is interpreted as
the current master. The user-given current master is compared to the master
server currently deduced by the monitor and if the two are unequal, an error is
given.

Example commands are below:

```
call command mariadbmon failover MyMonitor
call command mariadbmon switchover MyMonitor SlaveServ3
call command mariadbmon switchover MyMonitor SlaveServ3 MasterServ
call command mariadbmon rejoin MyMonitor NewServer2
```

The commands follow the standard module command syntax. All require the monitor
configuration name (MyMonitor) as the first parameter. For switchover, the
following parameters define the server to promote (SlaveServ3) and the server to
demote (MasterServ). For rejoin, the server to join (NewServer2) is required.

Failover can activate automatically, if `auto_failover` is on. The activation
begins when the master has been down for a number of monitor iterations defined
in `failcount`.

Rejoin stands for starting replication on a standalone server or redirecting a
slave replicating from the wrong master (any server that is not the cluster
master). The rejoined servers are directed to replicate from the current cluster
master server, forcing the replication topology to a 1-master-N-slaves
configuration.

A server is categorized as standalone if the server has no slave connections,
not even stopped ones. A server is replicating from the wrong master if the
slave IO thread is connected but the master server id seen by the slave does not
match the cluster master id. Alternatively, the IO thread may be stopped or
connecting but the master server host or port information differs from the
cluster master info. These criteria mean that a STOP SLAVE does not yet set a
slave as standalone.

With `auto_rejoin` active, the monitor will try to rejoin any servers matching
the above requirements. Rejoin does not obey `failcount` and will attempt to
rejoin any valid servers immediately. When activating rejoin manually, the
user-designated server must fulfill the same requirements.

The user can define files with SQL statements which are executed on any server
being demoted or promoted by cluster manipulation commands. See the sections on
`promotion_sql_file` and `demotion_sql_file` for more information.

### Limitations and requirements

Switchover and failover only understand simple topologies. They will not work if
the cluster has multiple masters, relay masters, or if the topology is circular.
The server cluster is assumed to be well-behaving with no significant
replication lag and all commands that modify the cluster complete in a few
seconds (faster than `backend_read_timeout` and `backend_write_timeout`).

The backends must all use GTID-based replication, and the domain id should not
change during a switchover or failover. Master and slaves must have
well-behaving GTIDs with no extra events on slave servers.

Switchover requires that the cluster is "frozen" for the duration of the
operation. This means that no data modifying statements such as INSERT or UPDATE
are executed and the GTID position of the master server is stable. When
switchover begins, the monitor sets the global *read_only* flag on the old
master backend to stop any updates. *read_only* does not affect users with the
SUPER-privilege so any such user can issue writes during a switchover. These
writes have a high chance to break replication, because the write may not be
replicated to all slaves before they switch to the new master. To prevent this,
any users who commonly do updates should not have the SUPER-privilege. For even
more security, the only SUPER-user session during a switchover should be the
MaxScale monitor user.

When mixing rejoin with failover/switchover, the backends should have
*log_slave_updates* on. The rejoining server is likely lagging behind the rest
of the cluster. If the current cluster master does not have binary logs from the
moment the rejoining server lost connection, the rejoining server cannot
continue replication. This is an issue if the master has changed and
the new master does not have *log_slave_updates* on.

### External master support

The monitor detects if a server in the cluster is replicating from an external
master (a server that is not monitored by the monitor). If the replicating
server is the cluster master server, then the cluster itself is considered to
have an external master.

If a failover/switchover happens, the new master server is set to replicate from
the cluster external master server. The usename and password for the replication
are defined in `replication_user` and `replication_password`. The address and
port used are the ones shown by `SHOW ALL SLAVES STATUS` on the old cluster
master server. In the case of switchover, the old master also stops replicating
from the external server to preserve the topology.

After failover the new master is replicating from the external master. If the
failed old master comes back online, it is also replicating from the external
server. To normalize the situation, either have *auto_rejoin* on or manually
execute a rejoin. This will redirect the old master to the current cluster
master.

### Configuration parameters

#### `auto_failover`

Enable automated master failover. This parameter expects a boolean value and the
default value is false.

When automatic failover is enabled, traditional MariaDB Master-Slave clusters
will automatically elect a new master if the old master goes down and stays down
a number of iterations given in `failcount`. Failover will not take place when
MaxScale is configured as a passive instance. For details on how MaxScale
behaves in passive mode, see the documentation on `failover_timeout` below.

If an attempt at failover fails or multiple master servers are detected, an
error is logged and automatic failover is disabled. If this happens, the cluster
must be fixed manually and the failover needs to be re-enabled via the REST API
or MaxAdmin.

The monitor user must have the SUPER and RELOAD privileges for failover to work.

#### `auto_rejoin`

Enable automatic joining of server to the cluster. This parameter expects a
boolean value and the default value is false.

When enabled, the monitor will attempt to direct standalone servers and servers
replicating from a relay master to the main cluster master server, enforcing a
1-master-N-slaves configuration.

For example, consider the following event series.

1. Slave A goes down
2. Master goes down and a failover is performed, promoting Slave B
3. Slave A comes back

Slave A is still trying to replicate from the downed master, since it wasn't
online during failover. If `auto_rejoin` is on, Slave A will quickly be
redirected to Slave B, the current master.

#### `replication_user` and `replication_password`

The username and password of the replication user. These are given as the values
for `MASTER_USER` and `MASTER_PASSWORD` whenever a `CHANGE MASTER TO` command is
executed.

Both `replication_user` and `replication_password` parameters must be defined if
a custom replication user is used. If neither of the parameters is defined, the
`CHANGE MASTER TO` command will use the monitor credentials for the replication
user.

The credentials used for replication must have the `REPLICATION SLAVE`
privilege.

`replication_password` uses the same encryption scheme as other password
parameters. If password encryption is in use, `replication_password` must be
encrypted with the same key to avoid erroneous decryption.

#### `failover_timeout` and `switchover_timeout`

Time limit for the cluster failover and switchover in seconds. The default values
are 90 seconds.

If no successful failover/switchover takes place within the configured time
period, a message is logged and automatic failover is disabled. This prevents
further automatic modifications to the misbehaving cluster.

`failover_timeout` also controls how long a MaxScale instance that has
transitioned from passive to active will wait for a failover to take place after
an apparent loss of a master server. If no new master server is detected within
the configured time period, failover will be initiated again.

#### `verify_master_failure` and `master_failure_timeout`

Enable additional master failure verification for automatic failover.
`verify_master_failure` is a boolean value (default: true) which enables this
feature and `master_failure_timeout` defines the timeout in seconds (default: 10).

The failure verification is performed by checking whether the slaves are still
connected to the master and receiving events. Effectively, if a slave has
received an event within `master_failure_timeout` seconds, the master is not
considered down when deciding whether to auto_failover.

If every slave loses its connection to the master (*Slave_IO_Running* is not
"Yes"), master failure is considered verified regardless of timeout. This allows
a faster failover when the master server crashes, as that causes immediate
disconnection.

For automatic failover to activate, the `failcount` requirement must also be
met.

#### `servers_no_promotion`

This is a comma-separated list of server names that will not be chosen for
master promotion during a failover or autoselected for switchover. This does not
affect switchover if the user selects the server to promote. Using this setting
can disrupt new master selection for failover such that an nonoptimal server is
chosen. At worst, this will cause replication to break. Alternatively, failover
may fail if all valid promotion candidates are in the exclusion list.

```
servers_no_promotion=backup_dc_server1,backup_dc_server2
```

#### `promotion_sql_file` and `demotion_sql_file`

These optional settings are paths to text files with SQL statements in them.
During promotion or demotion, the contents are read line-by-line and executed on
the backend. Use these settings to execute custom statements on the servers to
complement the built-in operations.

Empty lines or lines starting with '#' are ignored. Any results returned by the
statements are ignored. All statements must succeed for the failover, switchover
or rejoin to continue. The monitor user may require additional privileges and
grants for the custom commands to succeed.

When promoting a slave to master during switchover or failover, the
`promotion_sql_file` is read and executed on the new master server after its
read-only flag is disabled. The commands are ran *before* starting replication
from an external master if any.

`demotion_sql_file` is ran on an old master during demotion to slave, before the
old master starts replicating from the new master. The file is also ran before
rejoining a standalone server to the cluster, as the standalone server is
typically a former master server. When redirecting a slave replicating from a
wrong master, the sql-file is not executed.

Since the queries in the files are ran during operations which modify
replication topology, care is required. If `promotion_sql_file` contains data
modification (DML) queries, the new master server may not be able to
successfully replicate from an external master. `demotion_sql_file` should never
contain DML queries, as these may not replicate to the slave servers before
slave threads are stopped, breaking replication.

```
promotion_sql_file=/home/root/scripts/promotion.sql
demotion_sql_file=/home/root/scripts/demotion.sql
```

### Manual activation

Failover, switchover and rejoin can be activated manually through the REST API
or MaxAdmin. The commands are only performed when MaxScale is in active mode.

It is safe to perform manual operations even with `auto_failover` on, since
the automatic operations cannot happen simultaneously with the manual one.

If a switchover or failover fails, automatic failover is disabled to prevent
master changes to a possibly malfunctioning cluster. Automatic failover can be
turned on manually via the REST API or MaxAdmin. Example commands are listed
below.

```
maxadmin alter monitor MariaDB-Monitor auto_failover=true
maxctrl alter monitor MariaDB-Monitor auto_failover true
```

If automatic rejoin fails, it is disabled. To re-enable, use a similar command
as with automatic failover, replacing `auto_failover` with `auto_rejoin`.

When switchover is iniated via the REST-API, the URL path is:
```
/v1/maxscale/mariadbmon/switchover?<monitor-instance>&<new-master>&<current-master>
```
where `<monitor-instance>` is the monitor section mame from the MaxScale
configuration file, `<new-master>` the name of the server that should be
made into the new master and `<current-master>` the server that currently
is the master. If there is no master currently, then `<current-master>`
need not be specified.

So, given a MaxScale configuration file like
```
[Cluster1]
type=monitor
module=mariadbmon
servers=server1, server2, server3, server 4
...
```
with the assumption that `server2` is the current master, then the URL
path for making `server4` the new master would be:
```
/v1/maxscale/mariadbmon/switchover?Cluster1&server4&server2
```

The REST-API paths for manual failover and manual rejoin are mostly similar.
Failover does not accept any server parameters, rejoin requires the name of the
joining server.
```
/v1/maxscale/mariadbmon/failover?Cluster1
/v1/maxscale/mariadbmon/rejoin?Cluster1&server3
```

## Using the MariaDB Monitor With Binlogrouter

Since MaxScale 2.2 it's possible to detect a replication setup
which includes Binlog Server: the required action is to add the
binlog server to the list of servers only if _master_id_ identity is set.

For addition information read the
[Replication Proxy](../Tutorials/Replication-Proxy-Binlog-Router-Tutorial.md)
tutorial.

## Example 1 - Monitor script

Here is an example shell script which sends an email to an admin@my.org
when a server goes down.

```
#!/usr/bin/env bash

#This script assumes that the local mail server is configured properly
#The second argument is the event type
event=${$2/.*=/}
server=${$3/.*=/}
message="A server has gone down at `date`."
echo $message|mail -s "The event was $event for server $server." admin@my.org

```

Here is a monitor configuration that only triggers the script when a master
or a slave server goes down.

```
[Database Monitor]
type=monitor
module=mariadbmon
servers=server1,server2
script=mail_to_admin.sh
events=master_down,slave_down
```

When a master or a slave server goes down, the script is executed, a mail is
sent and the administrator will be immediately notified of any possible
problems.  This is just a simple example showing what you can do with MaxScale
and monitor scripts.