What types of MariaDB consulting projects do you handle?

Cloud migrations to AWS, GCP and Azure VMs; performance audits and tuning; high availability architecture on Galera Cluster; version upgrades; SST and state-transfer design; MaxScale and ProxySQL routing design; disaster recovery design; and security and compliance audits.

How do you architect High Availability (HA) for MariaDB?

Our expertise is centred on MariaDB Galera Cluster for multi-master replication and automatic failover. We also design and manage the quorum arithmetic, SST and gcache sizing, flow-control baselines, stale-read handling, and the MaxScale or ProxySQL routing layer in front of the cluster.

Scoped MariaDB projects,
run by a MariaDB Foundation sponsor

Bring us a defined problem and leave with a defined outcome. Galera cluster architecture, major version upgrades off end-of-life releases, MaxScale and ProxySQL routing, migrations, disaster recovery, and audits. Fixed scope, named engineers, a written deliverable you keep.

Scope a MariaDB engagement →

Fixed scopePriced before it starts

Silver SponsorMariaDB Foundation

Written deliverableYou keep it

Galera · MaxScaleProxySQL · ColumnStore

Certified ISO 27001 ISO 9001 AWS Advanced Tier Partner MariaDB Foundation Silver Sponsor Certified MariaDB DBAs

Brands that trust Mydbops

In short

Mydbops runs project-based MariaDB consulting engagements: Galera Cluster architecture design and review, major version upgrades including moves off MariaDB 10.6 after its July 2026 end of life, MaxScale and ProxySQL routing design, cloud and on-premises migrations, disaster recovery design, and performance and security audits. Engagements are fixed-scope with a written deliverable. Mydbops is a MariaDB Foundation Silver Sponsor, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified, and an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner.

Scoped and priced before it starts

What an engagement costs, and how it is shaped

Every Mydbops consulting engagement is scoped and priced before it starts. You approve a written scope, a deliverable and a duration, and that is what you pay for. There is no open-ended retainer and no discovery phase billed by the hour.

Three shapes cover almost every engagement:

Shape 01

A fixed-scope audit

One MariaDB instance or one cluster. You receive a written report with prioritised findings, the queries and configuration behind each one, and a remediation plan.

Delivered in a fixed number of business days · fixed fee

Shape 02

A defined project

A version upgrade, a migration, a Galera build, a MaxScale or ProxySQL rollout. Scoped against your environment, executed in your maintenance window, documented for your team.

Priced per project after a scoping call

Shape 03

A block of expert hours

For architecture review, second opinions and design work alongside your own engineers. A named engineer, on your problems, for the block you buy.

Minimum block · unused hours carry forward

What is never billed: the scoping call, the proposal, or time spent understanding your environment before scope is agreed.

Which one you need

Consulting, or managed services?

Choose consulting when you have a specific, project-shaped challenge with a defined outcome: a migration, a performance audit, a version upgrade, a new cluster architecture. It ends. Choose managed services when you want a long-term partnership in which our team takes proactive responsibility for your MariaDB estate around the clock. It continues.

	Consulting	Managed Services
Shape	Project, with an end date	Ongoing, with a renewal date
You are buying	A decision, a build, or a document	Continuous operation and response
Typical trigger	An upgrade, a migration, an outage post-mortem, a new architecture	No in-house DBA, or one who needs cover
What you keep	The deliverable and the knowledge transfer	The coverage, for as long as you hold it
Where to go next	This page	MariaDB Managed Services →

Many clients start with one and add the other. An audit that finds structural problems often becomes a project; a project often ends with a handover into managed services. You are never asked to decide before we have seen the environment.

Version support

MariaDB 10.6 reached end of life on 6 July 2026

Production clusters now run without community security patches. The challenge is rarely the binary swap: it is managing optimiser shifts, collation changes, and query regressions under real load.

Operational risk: Enterprise support runs to August 2028, and AWS RDS standard support concludes 31 December 2026. Regressions caught in staging are safe: in production, they cause outages.

Our Upgrade Methodology

Parallel staging build on target release using real production data.

Workload replay & query-plan benchmarking to eliminate regressions.

Maintenance-window cutover with a pre-validated, automated rollback.

Post-upgrade tuning with histograms, virtual columns, and indexing gains.

Documentation of parameters, schema diffs, and operational runbooks.

LTS Planning Note

MariaDB shortened community LTS from 5 to 3 years. Consequently, 11.8 reaches EOL in June 2028: before 11.4 in May 2029. From 12.3 onward, only .3 releases are LTS. Newest is not longest-supported.

MariaDB 10.6 Support Calendar

Action Needed

Community end of life6 Jul 2026

Enterprise support runs to23 Aug 2028

AWS RDS standard support ends31 Dec 2026

11.8 LTS end of life4 Jun 2028

11.4 LTS end of life29 May 2029

LTS from 12.3 onward.3 releases

Verified Case Study: Purple Styles Lab

For Purple Styles Lab, we built a parallel 10.6 staging environment, tuned histograms and virtual columns, deployed ProxySQL read routing, and right-sized hardware. Result: 5× faster query response, 75% smaller footprint, and zero user impact. Read the case study →

Scope a MariaDB engagement → Plan your 10.6 upgrade

The flagship deliverable

Galera Cluster architecture, and the continuity question

Galera delivers synchronous multi-master clustering and automatic failover, but introduces unique architectural failure modes. We review and tune the design decisions that prevent cluster-wide stalls:

Node count & quorum

Prevent split-brain partitions with odd node sizing (n = 2f + 1) or a lightweight garbd arbitrator where a 3rd database node is unjustified.

State transfer (SST / IST)

SST method sizing and gcache tuning so routine restarts resolve via non-blocking IST rather than full SST, eliminating donor stalls.

Flow control tuning

When wsrep_flow_control_paused nears 1.0, the cluster throttles to its slowest node. We identify and resolve the underlying sizing bottlenecks.

Stale reads prevention

Multi-master does not ensure immediate read-after-write visibility. We eliminate ORM stale reads using wsrep_sync_wait or causal writer pinning.

Schema changes & DDL

Safe online schema migration strategies (TOI vs RSU) engineered under live write traffic to prevent certification lockups and cluster stalls.

Proxy routing layer

Cluster-aware MaxScale or ProxySQL design for intelligent read/write splitting, transaction stickiness, and proxy-tier high availability.

Reference topology, with the support boundary drawn

Galera 4 / MaxScale / ProxySQL HA Reference

Why we draw it. "What exactly are you responsible for" is the question every scoping call opens with. We draw the boundary explicitly so there is no ambiguity about what an engagement covers.

The continuity question · Roadmap advisory

If your high-availability strategy assumes indefinite community Galera, that assumption now needs a review date

What is happening to Galera: MariaDB plc acquired Codership in May 2025. Following community pushback against removing Galera dependencies from the open-source tree ahead of the 12.3 series, MariaDB deferred the change in March 2026. However, the MariaDB Foundation confirms core engineers are now building an enterprise solution, leaving long-term community open-sourcing uncommitted.

What that means for your cluster: Production databases continue running safely today. What changes is your planning horizon: any high-availability strategy assuming indefinite community Galera development now requires a concrete review date rather than an open assumption.

Where Mydbops stands: As a MariaDB Foundation Silver Sponsor, we fund the upstream project and provide vendor-neutral architecture consulting: putting alternatives and real costs on the table so you know exactly when Galera fits, and when it does not.

The routing layer

MaxScale or ProxySQL: not interchangeable

The choice hinges on licensing constraints, query routing granularity, and team operations.

MaxScale

Native MariaDB & Galera awareness

Engineered for cluster state: automated failover, binlog integration, and state-aware read/write splitting. Governed by the Business Source Licence (BSL), converting to GPL over time.

ProxySQL

GPL granular query director

100% GPL. Excels at query rewriting, connection pooling, caching, and fine-grained rule management—as deployed for Purple Style Labs.

In an engagement: We resolve licensing constraints first, benchmark real query splits, test automated failover, and cluster the proxy layer to eliminate single points of failure.

An honest boundary

MariaDB and AWS RDS: make the choice deliberately

AWS RDS does not support MariaDB Galera Cluster, ColumnStore, multi-source replication, Spider/S3/TokuDB engines, or native InnoDB and Aria encryption. Choose deliberately based on your architectural requirements.

When RDS fits

Ideal if you want managed cloud automation, run standard primary-replica topologies, and have zero dependencies on unsupported engines or plugins.

When Self-Managed fits

Essential for Galera multi-master, ColumnStore, or strict lifecycle control: RDS lacks Extended Support for MariaDB and enforces automatic major upgrades.

Narrow Managed Market

With Azure retiring managed MariaDB and GCP offering none, managed options are narrower than MySQL: an important factor for multi-year cloud strategies.

We scope migrations in either direction and document the architectural trade-offs in writing before you commit.

Scope a MariaDB engagement → Talk through your RDS options

What we are engaged to do

Eight engagements, each with a written deliverable

Every engagement is scoped, executed and documented. Each links to the Mydbops work that proves it.

Performance audit

A written report with prioritised findings, the queries and configuration behind each one, a remediation plan, and the expected gain from each fix.

Proof: memory-leak & index-range posts

Version upgrade

Parallel staging build, workload replay, regression report, cutover and rollback plan, and post-upgrade tuning on the features the new release gives you.

Proof: 10.1 → 10.6 case study

Migration

Target design, cutover runbook, rehearsal, data validation, and a documented rollback. Cloud, on-premises, and cross-engine moves.

Proof: replication on AWS RDS

Galera architecture

Reference topology, quorum and SST design, gcache sizing, a flow-control baseline, and a failure-mode runbook.

Proof: HA cluster & Galera issues

SST and state transfer design

Method selection against your dataset and window, with the restart maths written down so routine restarts resolve with an IST, not a full SST.

Proof: SST methods posts

MaxScale / ProxySQL routing

Licence assessment, routing rules against your real query mix, tested failover, and high availability for the proxy layer itself.

Proof: MaxScale & ProxySQL series

Disaster recovery design

Backup architecture on mariabackup, restore rehearsal with a measured time, and a stated recovery position your team can act on.

Proof: flashback recovery post

Security & compliance audit

Access review, audit-plugin configuration, encryption position, and a compliance gap list mapped to your obligations.

Proof: MariaDB audit plugin post

How an engagement runs

Five steps, and you approve the scope before anything starts

1

Scoping call

We look at the environment and the problem. Not billed.

2

Written scope

What we will do, what you receive, how long it takes, what it costs, and what is explicitly out of scope. You approve it before anything starts.

3

Read-only assessment first

Every engagement opens with read-only access. Nothing on your system changes until we have shown you what we found and you have agreed the plan.

4

Execution in your window

Implementation runs in your scheduled maintenance window, with a tested rollback path. Evenings and weekends where that is what your business requires.

5

Handover

You receive the written deliverable, the runbooks, and a working session with your engineers. The point is that your team can operate what we built.

We can work alongside your existing DBAs and developers, or take full ownership of the project end to end. Both are normal. Say which you want at step one.

Proof

Engagements that show up in the numbers

MariaDB 10.1 → 10.6 + ProxySQL

Purple Style Labs upgrades off an end-of-life release with zero user impact

The client operates Pernia's Pop-Up Shop, one of India's largest multi-designer luxury fashion platforms, with more than fifteen experience centres and a high average order value. Checkout was slowing under peak load, replication lag was serving stale inventory to buyers, and the platform was running on MariaDB 10.1. We built a parallel 10.6 staging environment, replayed the workload, tuned with histograms and virtual columns, added ProxySQL read routing, and right-sized the hardware.

Read full case study →

5×Faster average SQL response

75%Smaller footprint, four servers to one

ZeroUser impact during the upgrade

mariabackupBackups moved off commercial licensing

“

The only reference that names disaster recovery and stability, covering 100,000 customers across Spain and Europe.

Teresa Product & Email Owner, CDMON

“

The Mydbops team performed our migration in just 24 hours, where others had quoted this as a 2 to 4 week project.

Anthony Peck Co-Founder & CTO, Astoria

“

Mydbops supported us at 20× scale, and were clear about where their ownership began and ended.

Abhishek Ravi CIO, Dream11

“

The only reference describing an actual delivery cadence, engineering to a schedule we could plan around.

Henry Suryawirawan VP of Engineering, Flip

Common questions

MariaDB consulting, answered

Every engagement is scoped and priced before it starts, so you approve a fixed scope, deliverable and duration rather than an open-ended rate. Engagements take one of three shapes: a fixed-scope audit of one instance or cluster, a defined project such as an upgrade or migration, or a block of expert hours. The scoping call, the proposal, and time spent understanding your environment are never billed. Published price bands pending sign-off

A fixed-scope audit covers one MariaDB instance or one cluster and is delivered in a fixed number of business days agreed at scoping. You receive a written report with prioritised findings, the queries and configuration behind each one, a remediation plan, and the expected gain from each fix. Turnaround commitment pending sign-off

Choose Consulting for a specific, project-based challenge with a defined outcome, such as migrating your MariaDB database, conducting a performance audit, or designing a new cluster architecture. It has an end date. Choose Managed Services for a long-term partnership in which our team takes full proactive responsibility for your MariaDB database's health, performance and security around the clock. Many clients start with one and add the other.

Cloud migrations to AWS, GCP and Azure VMs; performance audits and tuning; high availability architecture on Galera Cluster; version upgrades off end-of-life releases; SST and state-transfer design; MaxScale and ProxySQL routing design; disaster recovery design; and security and compliance audits, including the ecosystem tooling around each.

Our expertise is centred on MariaDB Galera Cluster for multi-master replication and automatic failover. We design and manage the quorum arithmetic (n = 2f + 1), SST and gcache sizing, flow-control baselines, stale-read handling, and the MaxScale or ProxySQL routing layer in front of the cluster, and we make the proxy layer itself highly available.

Community support for MariaDB 10.6 ended on 6 July 2026, and AWS RDS standard support for the release ends on 31 December 2026. We scope upgrades to a supported LTS release using a parallel staging environment, workload replay and query-plan comparison, with a tested rollback path and cutover in your maintenance window. Because MariaDB shortened community LTS from five years to three, the newest release is not always the longest-supported one, so we help you pick the target deliberately. Draft pending approval

Nothing breaks today. Galera in the community server remains a stable, proven basis for high-availability deployments. What changed is the planning horizon: after MariaDB plc acquired Codership in 2025, the long-term direction of community Galera is less certain. If your HA strategy assumes indefinite community Galera, that assumption now needs a review date, and we will design your cluster with the alternatives and their costs on the table. Founder sign-off required

No. AWS documentation lists MariaDB Galera Cluster among the features not supported by RDS for MariaDB, alongside ColumnStore, multi-source replication, and several storage engines. If Galera multi-master is a requirement, the cluster runs self-managed on EC2 or on-premises. We will scope the choice either way and put the trade-off in writing before you commit. Draft pending approval

MaxScale has the deepest awareness of MariaDB and Galera internals but is licensed under the Business Source Licence, which converts to GPL after a delay. ProxySQL is GPL and protocol-aware, strong on fine-grained query routing and rewriting. We establish the licensing constraint first, because it removes one option in about half of cases, then model your real read-write split rather than a benchmark and make the proxy layer itself highly available.

Our primary goal is zero business disruption. Every engagement opens read-only, and nothing on your system changes until we have shown you what we found and you have agreed the plan. All critical implementation, such as a migration or a major version upgrade, is planned and executed during your scheduled off-peak maintenance window, with a tested rollback path.

You still receive the written report, and a clean environment documented by an independent MariaDB Foundation sponsor is a useful thing to hold. In practice an audit that finds no urgent problems usually finds structural ones worth planning for, and we say so plainly rather than manufacturing work.

Our engagement model is flexible. We can integrate with your existing team, providing the specialised MariaDB guidance they need to succeed on a project, or take full ownership and manage the entire project from start to finish. Handover always includes a working session so your team can operate what we built.

Named senior MariaDB engineers do the work, not an anonymous queue. You keep the written deliverable, the runbooks, and the knowledge transfer from the handover session. The point of a consulting engagement is that your team can operate what we built after we leave.

Mydbops brings a decade of specialised database expertise and is a MariaDB Foundation Silver Sponsor, which means we fund the upstream project we build on. Our team has deep knowledge of the MariaDB ecosystem, including its storage engines, Galera clustering, and tools such as MaxScale and ProxySQL. We are ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified and an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner.