Back in December 2018, when we announced the general availability of Percona Server for MySQL 8.0, we also announced that the TokuDB Storage Engine has been marked as “deprecated” in this release, recommending to use the MyRocks Storage Engine as an alternative. We believe that MyRocks provides similar benefits for the majority of workloads and is better optimized for modern hardware.
Since then, we have continued maintaining the storage engine in the 8.0 release, e.g. by incorporating bug fixes. However, the ongoing amount of changes that are still occurring in the upstream MySQL 8.0 codebase have been a constant challenge and a cause for concern.
Maintaining TokuDB as part of the 8.0 codebase has become increasingly difficult and time-consuming. Based on the number of support requests and conversations on our forums, we have seen very little to no adoption of TokuDB in Percona Server for MySQL 8.0.
We have therefore decided that the TokuDB storage engine will be disabled in future versions of Percona Server for MySQL 8.0. Beginning with Percona Server version 8.0.25, we’ll add a respective warning notice to the release notes, to inform users about this upcoming change.
Timeline
Starting with Percona Server version 8.0.26 (expected in Q3 2021), the storage engine will still be included in the binary builds and packages, but disabled by default. Users upgrading from previous versions will still be able to re-enable it manually, so they can perform the necessary migration steps.
Starting with Percona Server for MySQL version 8.0.28 (expected to ship in Q1 2022), the TokuDB storage will no longer be supported and will be removed from the installation packages. It will still be part of the 8.0 source code, but not enabled in our binary builds.
We intend to fully remove it in the next major version of Percona Server for MySQL (9.0 or whatever version that will be). Note that this change only applies to Percona Server for MySQL version 8.0 – TokuDB remains enabled and supported in Percona Server 5.7 until this release has reached the end of its support period.
In case you’re still using TokuDB in Percona Server 8.0, we recommend switching to InnoDB or MyRocks instead as soon as possible. Please consult our documentation on how to migrate and remove the TokuDB storage engine.
If you need any assistance with migrating your data or if you have any questions or concerns about this, don’t hesitate to reach out to us – our experts are here to help!
Do we have any timeline on MySQL 9.0?
That’s probably a good question to ask Oracle about – we do not have any privileged insight into their roadmap or schedule.