MySQL 5.6 upgrade to MariaDB 10.3- Potential Issues?

[jazee]

I've been getting the nagging last few weeks by WHM/Cpanel to upgrade from MySQL 5.6 to 5.7. WHM Recommends upgrading to MariaDB 10.3. Just to be safe I stuck with MySQL. Both upgrades give a critical warning that the new versions will default to strict mode meaning it will break any INSERT or UPDATE statements that no field values. I found this to be true but simply adding SQL_MODE= to the my.cnf file and rebooting MySQL quickly fixes the issue.

Wondering how significant the benefit would be of upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to MariaDB 10.3 and more importantly, what have been the experiences of people that have gone with MariaDB 10.3? Is there any other issue other than have to disable strict mode and generating new mysqldumps? Or is it pretty smooth/bulletproof and issues are extremely rare? Will it screw up my MySQL DB replication I have setup?

Trying to get a feel for what I'd be in for if I went to MariaDB 10.3 and if the benefits are significant enough to even consider doing it.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @jazee,

One caveat to the MariaDB 10.3 upgrade is that MariaDB upgrades are currently one-way only. You can't upgrade to MariaDB 10.3 and then switch back to MySQL 5.7.

Most of the MariaDB 10.3 upgrade reports I've seen suggest a fairly smooth upgrade process (the strict mode change you referenced is the issue that seems to generate the most feedback). That said, it's generally a good idea to test the upgrade on a non-production machine if you can. Here's one of my responses on another thread you may find helpful:

One approach you can take is to temporary setup a secondary server for testing purposes. Once the secondary server is setup and cPanel & WHM is installed (a free trial license is utilized by default), you can then migrate your accounts to that test server (without changing the DNS) via WHM >> Transfer Tool. At that point, you'd upgrade MySQL or MariaDB to the new version, update the hosts file on your local workstation to point the domains to the test server, and then verify the scripts function as expected on the new MySQL/MariaDB version.

Thank you.