Introducing MariaDB MaxScale 25.01 GA

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As part of the MariaDB Enterprise Platform 2025 launch, we are happy to announce that MariaDB MaxScale 25.01 is also being released as GA. We have added some great new features for our enterprise customers with the newest release that helps with upgrades and query analytics.

What is MariaDB MaxScale?

MariaDB MaxScale is an advanced database proxy for MariaDB Enterprise Server that lets you avoid downtime, provide consistent performance, stop denial-of-service-attacks and includes NoSQL and stream data integrations. MaxScale has a modular architecture with different modules being responsible for different functions.

Let’s look at some of the cool new features in MaxScale 25.01. For a more exhaustive list please look at the What’s New in MaxScale page.

Workload Capture and Replay

The WCAR filter captures client traffic and stores it in a replayable format. The filter is designed for capturing traffic on a production MaxScale instance. The captured data can then be used as a reproducible way of generating accurate client traffic without having to write application-specific traffic generators.

The captured workloads can be used for many different situations such as:

  • Verify that upgrades of MariaDB behave as expected
  • Measure what effects configuration changes may have
  • Find problematic SQL statements that take longer than expected. In read-only mode one can re-run the capture in order to find slow queries
Diff Router

The diff router compares the behavior of one MariaDB server version to that of another. It will send the workload both to the server currently being used – called main – and to another server – called other – whose behavior needs to be assessed.

As responses from main are returned to the client without needing to wait for responses from other, the impact on the performance is minimized. While running, Diff collects latency histogram data that can be used for comparing the behavior of main and other, for instance, before upgrading to a new version. Combined with the WCAR filter, the diff router allows you to do powerful comparisons between different versions of the server or different settings with minimal impact on your production environment – a very powerful Enterprise feature.

MariaDB Monitor

We have added a safe- option to the auto-failover functionality of the MariaDB Monitor module in MaxScale. With the safe option, MaxScale will not perform a failover if data loss is certain, whereas it otherwise will always perform a failover if the primary node is down.

MariaDB Monitor can now perform a write test on the primary server and perform a failover if the write test fails. This helps deal with storage engine or disk hangups.

The MariaDB Monitor module command switchover can now be called with key-value arguments. This form also supports leaving the old primary in maintenance mode instead of redirecting it.

MaxScale License

Starting with MaxScale 25.01, we are updating the MaxScale license to better align with the value it brings to our enterprise customers.

MaxScale is a core component of MariaDB Enterprise Platform. MaxScale has always been part of our enterprise tooling that helps meet the database challenges faced by enterprises – whether that’s needing greater high availability, scalability or security. New MaxScale features included in version 25.01 have been developed in close collaboration with some of our largest enterprise customers. Given the value we consistently deliver with MaxScale to enterprises, we have decided to change its license from the Business Source License (BSL) to a closed source commercial license for 25.01 and later versions.

Older versions of MaxScale will remain licensed under the BSL. This licensing change will enable us to allocate even more resources to deliver advanced capabilities, faster updates and enhanced support tailored to the requirements of our enterprise customers.

As always, there is no impact to MariaDB Community Server or MariaDB Enterprise Server. Both remain licensed under GPL.

This license change has no impact on current enterprise customers. They can continue using and upgrade to the newest version of MaxScale as they typically have done in the past.

New Free MaxScale Version Coming Soon

We understand the importance of providing everyone with a chance to explore the newest features of MaxScale. That’s why, to complement the license change, we’re excited to announce the upcoming release of a free version of MaxScale. This version will let you test-drive its features and use MaxScale with some built-in limitations. Stay tuned for more details – exciting things are on the way!

Get Started with MariaDB MaxScale

Customers can get started with MaxScale 25.01 by visiting mariadb.com/downloads/enterprise/enterprise-maxscale. If you would like to trial the newest version of MaxScale, please contact us.