We have a line of business application on MySQL 5.6 that needs to run for a couple of more years. We are moving it to a new, on-prem setup and are considering setting it up with Percona Server for MySQL 5.6 as it’s a drop-in replacement.
The reason we want to do this is because we plan to setup replication using XtraBackup and also use the PT toolkit, so we figured we might as well go with Percona Server for MySQL 5.6 to make everything run on Percona stuff.
Could someone at Percona clarify if the Post EOL Support can be purchased even if we install Percona MySQL 5.6 rather than regular MySQL 5.6?
The page for post EOL support only mentions the latter, not Percona MySQL 5.6.
Keep in mind that 5.7 will also be EOL in October 2023 and 8.0 will be your only option.
As Matthew points out, the application facing differences between 5.6 and 5.7 are very small. 8.0 is a different story with application compatibility and you should be considering your migration path to 8.0.
As far as 5.6 is concerned, it is EOL and we will not provide any more public builds of Percona Server 5.6. Supported platforms for 5.6 are also diminishing over time and one can not expect to be able to run 5.6 on new versions of the various distributions. As of today, the only supported non EOL distributions that you can run MySQL 5.6 on are CentOS 7 and 8, Debian 10, and Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 and many of these are going to become EOL within the next 12 months. EOL software and distributions present a serious security risk.
While we are going to make a best effort to keep the XtraBackup 2.4 series compatible with the last release of 5.6, we can not guarantee that future releases of the XtraBackup 2.4 series will be 100% compatible with 5.6. You can always stick with already released and compatible versions until you can get migrated.
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George O. Lorch III
Director of Server Engineering, Percona Server for MySQL, Percona XtraDB Cluster, and Percona XtraBackup
Apparently the contract with the software vendor is for a couple of more years and they want nothing but 5.6.x on the server. Am just trying to cover our bases with the post EOL support.
Thank you for this very thoughtful and detailed response. I had a hard time trying to find the Percona Server for MySQL 5.6 on the site, so I get the drift of your message. I also noticed that it isn’t supported on Ubuntu 20.04.
I am going to share your response with the management and will probably get them to approve a test migration of the databases at least to 5.7 to convince them not to stick with 5.6.
@fuzzybase If your management gives you push-back, have them come here and we will assure them that 5.7 is good for 99.9% of applications out there. There is no reason to stick with 5.6.
Correct, Oracle never ported MySQL 5.6 to Ubuntu 20.04 as there was only a few month difference between when 20.04 appeared and 5.6 was to EOL. Since Oracle never ported, neither did we. Our EOL offering can certainly help in bridging the gap during migrations and I do suggest that you explore it to see if it will provide you and your vendor what you need. I am not a lawyer and can not offer any genuine legal advice, but, you should consider the possibility of liability issues if they are a concern when running EOL software or distributions, either with or without post EOL support contracts.
Best of luck!
George O. Lorch III
Director of Server Engineering, Percona Server for MySQL, Percona XtraDB Cluster, and Percona XtraBackup
I think we could get by with the last official release of Percona Server for MySQL 5.6 and the post EOL support, but I worry about XtraBackup potentially not being 100% compatible with 5.6 down the line. That won’t be a comfortable situation to be in.
Thanks to you and @matthewb for the thoughtful suggestions. We will try and convince the management to approve at least a test migration to mysql 5.7.
I also noticed that it isn’t supported on Ubuntu 20.04.