A production-focused resource for database administrators, DevOps engineers, and platform teams running MariaDB Galera. From the mechanics of synchronous, certification-based replication to the automation patterns that keep a multi-master cluster healthy at scale.
MariaDB Galera Cluster delivers synchronous multi-master replication through the Write-Set
Replication (wsrep) API, enabling zero-RPO data consistency across distributed
nodes. Operationalizing it in production demands deterministic configuration, automated
lifecycle orchestration, and strict adherence to certification-based state transfer protocols.
These guides treat Galera state as a programmable surface. They pair the underlying theory — write-set certification, conflict resolution, flow control — with concrete, copy-ready configuration and Python automation you can fold into CI/CD pipelines, health checks, and failover routines.
Everything here targets real deployments on MariaDB 10.6 through 11.x with Galera 4: explicit directives, version-specific caveats, and infrastructure-as-code considerations rather than toy examples.
How Galera works under the hood — the wsrep API, synchronous replication mechanics, write-set certification, multi-master topologies, network security, and read-only fallback routing.
Operating a production cluster — hardware sizing, wsrep.cnf tuning, bootstrapping, data synchronization, graceful node join/leave, Python health monitoring, and startup error recovery.