Read Replicas

Read Replica

Read Replicas enhance database scalability by distributing read operations across multiple DBaaS instances, effectively managing high read traffic without impacting the performance of the primary database. This approach is ideal for applications requiring fast read access, as it improves response times while preserving the primary database’s ability to handle write operations efficiently.

To establish a DBaaS Read Replica, the system utilizes a filesystem snapshot from the primary database instance to initialize the secondary instance. It then employs the database engine’s native asynchronous replication to ensure the read replica remains consistently updated with any alterations occurring in the source database instance.

Limitations

• Read Replicas are available for DBaas MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• You can create a maximum of three additional read replicas per DBaaS.
• Compute ressources and data storage size needs to be equal to the origin DBaaS.
• It is not possible to convert a secondary server into a primary server to enable write access.
• Cascading configurations, where a secondary server acts as a source for another secondary server, are not supported.

Prerequisites

Your application must be configured to distinguish between read and write operations. This involves setting up separate database connections for each type of operation:

• Write Operations: Connections should be directed exclusively to the primary server where data modifications (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) are allowed.

• Read Operations: Connections for queries that only fetch data (SELECT) should be routed to the read replicas.

If you are interested in utilizing our read replicas feature, please open a ticket in our customer portal.

We’re working on a feature to let you directly create read-replicas in our customer portal. Until then we thank you for your patience as we improve our services.