.. _replication_howto:

================================================================================
 How to setup a slave for replication in 6 simple steps with Percona XtraBackup
================================================================================

  Data is, by far, the most valuable part of a system. Having a backup done systematically and available for a rapid recovery in case of failure is admittedly essential to a system. However, it is not common practice because of its costs, infrastructure needed or even the boredom associated to the task. |Percona XtraBackup| is designed to solve this problem.

  You can have almost real-time backups in 6 simple steps by setting up a replication environment with |Percona XtraBackup|. 

 |Percona XtraBackup| is a tool for backing up your data extremely easy and without interruption. It performs "hot backups" on unmodified versions of |MySQL| servers (5.1, 5.5 and 5.6), as well as |MariaDB| and *Percona Servers*. It is a totally free and open source software distributed only under the *GPLv2* license.

All the things you will need
============================

Setting up a slave for replication with |Percona XtraBackup| is really a very straightforward procedure. In order to keep it simple, here is a list of the things you need to follow the steps without hassles:

* ``TheMaster`` 
  A system with a |MySQL|-based server installed, configured and running. This system will be called ``TheMaster``, as it is where your data is stored and the one to be replicated. We will assume the following about this system:

  * the |MySQL| server is able to communicate with others by the standard TCP/IP port;

  * the *SSH* server is installed and configured;

  * you have a user account in the system with the appropriate permissions;

  * you have a MySQL's user account with appropriate privileges.

  * server has binlogs enabled and server-id set up to 1.


* ``TheSlave`` 
  Another system, with a |MySQL|-based server installed on it. We will refer to this machine as ``TheSlave`` and we will assume the same things we did about ``TheMaster``, except that the server-id on ``TheSlave`` is 2.

* ``Percona XtraBackup``
  The backup tool we will use. It should be installed in both computers for convenience.

STEP 1: Make a backup on ``TheMaster`` and prepare it
=====================================================

At ``TheMaster``, issue the following to a shell:

.. code-block:: console

   TheMaster$ innobackupex --user=yourDBuser --password=MaGiCdB1 /path/to/backupdir 

After this is finished you should get:

.. code-block:: console

   innobackupex: completed OK! 

This will make a copy of your |MySQL| data dir to the /path/to/backupdir/$TIMESTAMP. You have told |Percona XtraBackup| (through the |innobackupex| script) to connect to the database server using your database user and password, and do a hot backup of all your data in it (all |MyISAM|, |InnoDB| tables and indexes in them).

In order for snapshot to be consistent you need to prepare the data:

.. code-block:: console

   TheMaster$ innobackupex --user=yourDBuser --password=MaGiCdB1 \
              --apply-log /path/to/backupdir/$TIMESTAMP/

You need to select path where your snapshot has been taken, for example /home/backups/2012-01-16_11-14-43. If everything is ok you should get the same OK message. Now the transaction logs are applied to the data files, and new ones are created: your data files are ready to be used by the MySQL server.

|Percona XtraBackup| knows where your data is by reading your :term:`my.cnf`. If you have your configuration file in a non-standard place, you should use the flag :option:`--defaults-file` ``=/location/of/my.cnf``.

If you want to skip writing the username/password every time you want to access |MySQL|, you can set it up in your $HOME folder. Just edit .my.cnf and add:

.. code-block:: console
   
   [client]
   user=root
   pass=MaGiCdB1

This is will give you root access to MySQL. 

STEP 2:  Copy backed up data to TheSlave
========================================

Use rsync or scp to copy the data from Master to Slave. If you're syncing the data directly to slave's data directory it's advised to stop the mysqld there. 

.. code-block:: console

   TheMaster$ rsync -avpP -e ssh /path/to/backupdir/$TIMESTAMP TheSlave:/path/to/mysql/

After data has been copied you can back up the original or previously installed |MySQL| :term:`datadir` (**NOTE**: Make sure mysqld is shut down before you move the contents of its datadir, or move the snapshot into its datadir.):

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ mv /path/to/mysql/datadir /path/to/mysql/datadir_bak

and move the snapshot from ``TheMaster`` in its place:

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ mv /path/to/mysql/$TIMESTAMP /path/to/mysql/datadir

After you copy data over, make sure |MySQL| has proper permissions to access them.

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ chown mysql:mysql /path/to/mysql/datadir

In case the ibdata and iblog files are located in different directories outside of the datadir, you will have to put them in their proper place after the logs have been applied.

STEP 3: Configure The Master's MySQL server
===========================================

Add the appropriate grant in order for slave to be able to connect to master: 

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheMaster|mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.*  TO 'repl'@'$slaveip'
    IDENTIFIED BY '$slavepass';

Also make sure that firewall rules are correct and that ``TheSlave`` can connect to ``TheMaster``. Test that you can run the mysql client on ``TheSlave``, connect to ``TheMaster``, and authenticate. ::

  TheSlave$ mysql --host=TheMaster --user=repl --password=$slavepass

Verify the privileges. ::  

  mysql> SHOW GRANTS;

STEP 4: Configure The Slave's MySQL server
==========================================

First copy the :term:`my.cnf` file from ``TheMaster`` to ``TheSlave``:

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ scp user@TheMaster:/etc/mysql/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf

then change the following options in /etc/mysql/my.cnf:

.. code-block:: console

   server-id=2

and start/restart :command:`mysqld` on ``TheSlave``.

In case you're using init script on Debian based system to start mysqld, be sure that the password for ``debian-sys-maint`` user has been updated and it's the same as that user's password on the ``TheMaster``. Password can be seen and updated in :file:`/etc/mysql/debian.cnf`.


STEP 5: Start the replication
=============================

Look at the content of the file :file:`xtrabackup_binlog_info`, it will be something like:

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ cat /var/lib/mysql/xtrabackup_binlog_info
   TheMaster-bin.000001     481

Execute the ``CHANGE MASTER`` statement on a MySQL console and use the username and password you've set up in STEP 3: 

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheSlave|mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO 
                   MASTER_HOST='$masterip',	
                   MASTER_USER='repl',
                   MASTER_PASSWORD='$slavepass',
                   MASTER_LOG_FILE='TheMaster-bin.000001', 
                   MASTER_LOG_POS=481;

and start the slave:

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheSlave|mysql> START SLAVE;

STEP 6: Check
=============

You should check that everything went OK with:

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheSlave|mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS \G
            ...
            Slave_IO_Running: Yes
            Slave_SQL_Running: Yes
            ...
            Seconds_Behind_Master: 13
            ...

Both ``IO`` and ``SQL`` threads need to be running. The ``Seconds_Behind_Master`` means the ``SQL`` currently being executed has a ``current_timestamp`` of 13 seconds ago. It is an estimation of the lag between ``TheMaster`` and ``TheSlave``. Note that at the beginning, a high value could be shown because ``TheSlave`` has to "catch up" with ``TheMaster``.

Adding more slaves to The Master
================================

You can use this procedure with slight variation to add new slaves to a master. We will use |Percona XtraBackup| to clone an already configured slave. We will continue using the previous scenario for convenience but we will add ``TheNewSlave`` to the plot.

At ``TheSlave``, do a full backup:

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ innobackupex --user=yourDBuser --password=MaGiCiGaM \
             --slave-info /path/to/backupdir 

By using the :option:`--slave-info` |Percona XtraBackup| creates additional file called :file:`xtrabackup_slave_info`.

Apply the logs:

.. code-block:: console

   TheSlave$ innobackupex --apply-log --use-memory=2G /path/to/backupdir/$TIMESTAMP/

Copy the directory from the ``TheSlave`` to ``TheNewSlave`` (**NOTE**: Make sure mysqld is shut down on ``TheNewSlave`` before you copy the contents the snapshot into its :term:`datadir`.): 

.. code-block:: console

   rsync -avprP -e ssh /path/to/backupdir/$TIMESTAMP TheNewSlave:/path/to/mysql/datadir

Add additional grant on the master:

.. code-block:: mysql

	TheMaster|mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.*  TO 'repl'@'$newslaveip'
                     IDENTIFIED BY '$slavepass';

Copy the configuration file from ``TheSlave``:

.. code-block:: console

   TheNEWSlave$ scp user@TheSlave:/etc/mysql/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Make sure you change the server-id variable in :file:`/etc/mysql/my.cnf` to 3 and disable the replication on start:

.. code-block:: console

   skip-slave-start
   server-id=3

After setting ``server_id``, start :command:`mysqld`.

Fetch the master_log_file and master_log_pos from the file :file:`xtrabackup_slave_info`, execute the statement for setting up the master and the log file for ``The NEW Slave``:

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheNEWSlave|mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO 
                      MASTER_HOST='$masterip',
                      MASTER_USER='repl',
                      MASTER_PASSWORD='$slavepass',
                      MASTER_LOG_FILE='TheMaster-bin.000001', 
                      MASTER_LOG_POS=481;

and start the slave:

.. code-block:: mysql

   TheSlave|mysql> START SLAVE;

If both IO and SQL threads are running when you check the ``TheNewSlave``, server is replicating ``TheMaster``.
