Overview

Background

This project has the primary objective of ensuring that the University’s MariaDB infrastructure remains current and supportable. In order to do this, it is essential that the University upgrades to the latest stable and supported versions of MariaDB. 

An earlier project, (INF143), migrated from MySQL to MariaDB, saving approx. £30k per year in Oracle licence costs and moving the University towards a better supported open source community. Additionally, in the last project, automation was added to the build and deployment of databases. This project would like to continue this automation work to improve the efficiency of minor updates. 

There is a requirement to undertake patching to ensure that the environments remain supportable and up to date in relation to security.  

If no action is taken, the University would continue to be on an unsupported version and would be vulnerable to security breaches. 

The main deliverable is upgraded versions of the MariaDB databases, although the number of these and the users are currently not fully known.  

While DEV, TEST and LIVE upgrades will be required, a small amount of downtime, (approx. 1 hour), will be required to undertake the upgrade work, which will help when planning the migration work around user needs. 

Scope

There are a number of MariaDB servers in scope, although the full list of impacted databases is still to be determined.  

Analysis will determine the full list of databases in scope and an appropriate deployment schedule. Work will then be required to identify the scale of the impact and to ensure that user groups are made aware of the upgrade plans to ensure that the optimal time is planned for the upgrade. 

Out of scope

Initially, one of the main MariaDB databases identified was the University website (www.ed.ac.uk). However, this website migrated to external hosting in March 2022. Support is only needed for the on-premise MariaDB database until end March 2023 and existing support for the current version of MariaDB lasts until May 2023. Given this, it is anticipated that the MariaDB database associated with EdWeb will not require to be upgraded. 

Analysis will determine if any further existing MariaDB databases are out of scope of the project.  

Objectives and Deliverables

Note that these deliverables are indicative and yet to be agreed by the project team.

Benefits

• MariaDB will remain in a supported state and we will continue to receive the required security patches.

This upgrade will ensure that the University’s database infrastructure remains supportable and minimises exposure to potential security breaches.

• Sustainability

The updated databases will continue to be supported by the appropriate teams in Production Management. This is not expected to change. Once upgraded, the databases will be fully supported within the UoE infrastructure.

Success Criteria

• All impacted databases are successfully identified together with the associated user groups
• The upgrade of the databases are completed successfully in DEV, TEST and LIVE
• There are no issues experienced by users with maintaining current data
• There are no negative changes experienced by users to the current data

Project Milestones

*The Project Brief was signed off at the Project Meeting held 19/04/22 and, following Sponsor approval will progress to Apps Review on 21/04/22. This will have a positive impact on the project timeline, which will be updated once the project is noted at Apps Review.