[EOS/Discontinuation] End of updates and maintenance for the shared proxy feature from April 01, 2021 - ApsaraDB RDS

On April 01, 2021, Alibaba Cloud stopped the updates and maintenance for the shared proxy feature of ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL. After this date, Alibaba Cloud provides only technical support for the shared proxy feature. If you no longer use the shared proxy feature for read/write splitting, you can disable the shared proxy feature. If you still use the shared proxy feature, we recommend that you upgrade the database proxy that is enabled on your primary RDS instance from a shared proxy to a dedicated proxy at your earliest opportunity.

The database proxy resides between your database system and your application. All requests from your application are sent to the database proxy. Then, the database proxy forwards the requests to the primary and read-only RDS instances of your database system based on the read weights of these instances to implement read/write splitting and reduce the loads on the primary RDS instance. For more information, see Introduction to database proxies. ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL provides two types of database proxies: dedicated proxies and shared proxies. In contrast with shared proxies, dedicated proxies are easy to use and maintain, and provide high availability and high performance. In addition, dedicated proxies support advanced features, such as transaction splitting and connection pooling.

Effective date

April 01, 2021

Affected instances

RDS instances for which the shared proxy feature is enabled. These instances run MySQL 5.7 on RDS High-availability Edition with local disks or run MySQL 5.6.

You can go to the Database Proxy page of your RDS instance and check for the Read/Write Splitting (Shared) tab. If the tab is displayed, the shared proxy feature is enabled on the RDS instance.

Causes

A shared proxy serves more than one primary RDS instance, and these RDS instances may belong to different users. This decreases the stability of your database service due to potential resource competition and isolation issues. We recommend that you upgrade the database proxy of your primary RDS instance from a shared proxy to a dedicated proxy. Dedicated proxies outperform shared proxies. For more information about the benefits of dedicated proxies, see Benefits.

Impacts

Alibaba Cloud provides updates and maintenance for dedicated proxies. However, Alibaba Cloud no longer provides updates or maintenance for shared proxies.
The stability of shared proxies is no longer guaranteed in the service level agreement (SLA).

Suggestions

We recommend that you upgrade the database proxy of your primary RDS instance from a shared proxy to a dedicated proxy before April 01, 2021. For more information, see Upgrade the database proxy of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance from a shared proxy to a dedicated proxy.

Billing rules

The dedicated proxy feature is a paid feature. For more information, see Billing rules for the dedicated proxy feature of ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL.

If you upgrade the database proxy of your primary RDS instance from a shared proxy to a dedicated proxy, you can use the dedicated proxy feature free of charge for at least one year. For more information, see Upgrade promotions.

Benefits

The following table describes the advantages of dedicated proxies over shared proxies.

Item	Shared proxy	Dedicated proxy
Queries per second (QPS)	The QPS cannot be guaranteed. The maximum QPS is 1,000. You cannot increase the QPS by scaling out resources.	The QPS is stable. Each dedicated proxy supports up to 20,000 QPS. In addition, you can increase the QPS by adding proxies. A maximum of 60 proxies can be enabled for each primary RDS instance.
Stability	A number of primary RDS instances that belong to different users compete for resources.	Each primary RDS instance has its own dedicated proxy and does not need to compete with other primary RDS instances for resources.
Availability	Each shared proxy works in the single-node architecture. If a shared proxy becomes faulty, it is disconnected.	Each dedicated proxy works in the high-availability architecture. This ensures the availability of your database service.
Monitoring	Monitoring is not supported.	You can monitor the CPU utilization of dedicated proxies and obtain the latest information about the proxy resources.
Read/write splitting	The read/write splitting feature is supported.	The read/write splitting feature is supported.
Read/write splitting endpoint	The read/write splitting endpoint is supported. After the read/write splitting feature is disabled, the read/write splitting endpoint is immediately released. In this case, you must modify the endpoint configuration on your application.	The read/write splitting endpoint is supported. To implement read/write splitting by using a dedicated proxy endpoint, you need to only add the dedicated proxy endpoint to your application. If you enable or disable the read/write splitting feature, you do not need to modify the endpoint configuration on your application. The dedicated proxy endpoint remains valid unless you disable the dedicated proxy feature.
Advanced features	None	The following advanced features are provided: Connection pooling: This feature mitigates the heavy loads on your database system. Heavy load issues are caused by excessive connections or frequent short-lived connections such as PHP-based connections. For more information, see Set the connection pool type of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance. Transaction splitting: This feature forwards the read requests prior to write operations within a transaction to the read-only RDS instances. This reduces the loads on your primary RDS instance. For more information, see Enable the transaction splitting feature for an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance. SSL encryption: This feature encrypts the data that is destined for the dedicated proxy endpoint. This ensures the security of the data in transit. For more information, see Configure SSL encryption for a dedicated proxy endpoint on an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance.