Migrate MySQL for Open edX to AWS RDS

Summary

If you’re looking for a general overview of how to scale the Open edX platform then you should read this first, “Scaling Open edX“. Also, bear in mind that this article presents a luxury alternative to the best practice that I outline in my article, “Scaling MySQL for Open edX” which you should definitely read if you haven’t already done so.

AWS provides an excellent managed relational database service named RDS that provides extremely high up-time and also takes care of all Linux and MySQL database administration activities for you. It costs roughly double the alternative of hosting your own Ubuntu EC2 instance with the MySQL service installed, but it’s a great alternative if you can afford it. Aside from taking care of all data backups and server snapshots for you, which is a true luxury, it also provides you with a console where you can dial up processing capacity literally with the click of a button. But having said all of that, very few of my clients actually use AWS RDS because MySQL for Open edX tends to be a low-maintenance service once it’s been migrated to a standalone server. But, if you can afford RDS you definitely will not be disappointed with it.

There are a couple of technical challenges to creating a MySQL database environment from scratch for use with Open edX. First, you’ll need to restore a backup of the “mysql” database in the existing local MySQL service of your Open edX platform. This database contains the usernames, passwords and permissions for the many MySQL accounts that are created by the Open edX native installation process. I provide exact instructions below on how to do this. And second, once migrated, you might need to upgrade this database depending on the precise MySQL version and release that runs on AWS’ RDS service. The exact nature and complexity of this upgrade(s) can vary depending on the version that is currently running on your existing Open edX platform, the version on your new AWS RDS service, and the number of major MySQL releases in between these two. However, beyond those two issues this article looks quite similar to my other article on migrating MySQL.

Regarding horizontal Vs vertical scaling strategies: note that you probably only need to focus on vertical scaling for MySQL on Open edX. Even though MySQL implements a publisher-subscriber model, I’ve found this to be complete overkill for all edX platforms on which I’ve ever worked. You can reasonably begin to scale MySQL using AWS’s default RDS service as further described below, increasing the processing capacity over time as-needed.

Note that OpenCraft also provides technical instructions for this operation in their Open edX Deployment ReadTheDocs pages.