How to Avoid Downtime when Upgrading a Amazon RDS for MySQL Instance

Use Case

You don't want to incur downtime on your Fivetran connector when you upgrade your Amazon RDS for MySQL database engine.

Recommendations

You can connect to a read replica temporarily or permanently to ensure that your connector sync is not affected by the database engine upgrade.

1. Create a new read replica in the version you're upgrading to.
2. Create a new connector with the new read replica.
3. Complete the historical sync.
4. Begin an incremental sync.
5. Pause your existing connector.

   NOTE: Running connectors in parallel results in accruing MAR on duplicate rows of data. Pausing the new connector past the retention period of the binlogs requires a new historical sync.

6. Upgrade the primary database.

   NOTE: Check the paramater group assigned to the read replica. An upgrade to the primary database might change the parameter group asssigned to the read replica. Revert the paramater group if the update altered it.

Context

Fivetran can connect with your primary Amazon RDS for MySQL database or a read replica of your primary Amazon RDS for MySQL database. AWS requires an upgrade of any read replicas before an upgrade of the database engine.

Read MySQL's documentation on version compatibility to learn about possible compatibility issues.