What's New in MariaDB MaxScale 2.5?

Overview

MariaDB MaxScale 2.5 introduces the following new features:

Administration

MaxScale 2.5 contains some enhancements to administrative interfaces.

MaxGUI

MaxScale 2.5 introduces a new graphical user interface for administrative tasks called MaxGUI:

  • It uses the REST API.

  • It is an alternative to the MaxCtrl command-line client.

  • It supports TLS.

MaxAdmin

MaxScale 2.5 removes the MaxAdmin command-line client:

  • It has been replaced by the MaxCtrl command-line client.

High Availability

MaxScale 2.5 contains some enhancement to high availability (HA) features:

Enterprise ColumnStore

MaxScale 2.5 supports Multi-Node Enterprise ColumnStore 5.4 deployments:

Core

MaxScale 2.5 contains some core enhancements:

Monitors

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements for monitors.

MariaDB Monitor

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements to MariaDB Monitor (mariadbmon):

Routers

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements for routers:

  • It adds the targets parameter for all routers, which allows a router to route traffic to another service.

  • It adds the connection_keepalive parameter for all routers. Previously, it was only available for the Read/Write Split Router (readwritesplit).

  • It removes the weightby parameter.

Binlog Router

MaxScale 2.5 completely re-implements the Binlog Router (binlogrouter):

  • It is more efficient

  • It is more performant.

Kafka CDC Router

MaxScale 2.5 introduces the Kafka CDC Router (kafkacdc):

  • It streams binlogs in JSON format to Kafka Broker.

  • It streams MariaDB data to external databases that can act as Kafka consumers or connectors, such as Elasticsearch and MongoDB.

Mirror Router

MaxScale 2.5 introduces the Mirror Router (mirror):

  • It routes the every statement to multiple servers.

  • It exports query metrics, so that results and performance of each server can be compared.

Read/Write Split Router

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements to Read/Write Split Router (readwritesplit):

  • It changes the causal_reads parameter. The parameter now has multiple possible values to enable different kinds of causality checks.

Listeners

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements for listeners:

  • It adds support for multiple authenticators for each listener, so that listeners and their corresponding services do not need to be duplicated for each unique authenticator.

  • It adds the authenticator_options parameter, which allows options to be provided to the listener's authenticators. Currently, only authenticators for the MariaDBClient protocol support options.

  • It adds the ssl_verify_peer_host parameter, which enables TLS peer host verification. When this feature is enabled, the peer host name or IP is verified against the certificate that is sent by the peer.

  • It adds the ssl_crl parameter, which enables TLS certificate revocation lists (CRL).

Servers

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements for servers:

  • It removes the serv_weight parameter. Use the rank parameter instead.

  • It deprecates the protocol parameter for servers. The value is ignored.

  • It deprecates the authenticator parameter for servers. The value is ignored.

  • It adds the ssl_verify_peer_host parameter, which enables TLS peer host verification. When this feature is enabled, the peer host name or IP is verified against the certificate that is sent by the peer.

  • It adds the ssl_crl parameter, which enables TLS certificate revocation lists (CRL).

Filters

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements for filters.

Cache Filter

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements to the Cache Filter (cache):

  • It adds support for a shared memcached cache, so that cached results can be shared in an environment with multiple MaxScale instances.

  • It adds support for a shared Redis cache, so that cached results can be shared in an environment with multiple MaxScale instances.

Security

MaxScale 2.5 contains security enhancements.

Data-in-Transit Encryption

MaxScale 2.5 contains some enhancements to data-in-transit encryption:

  • It adds support for TLS peer host verification.

  • It adds support for TLS certificate revocation lists (CRL).

Authenticators

MaxScale 2.5 contains enhancements to authenticators:

  • It adds support for multiple authenticators for each listener.

  • Listeners and their corresponding services do not need to be duplicated for each unique authenticator.