Replication can be used in many different environments for a range of purposes. This section provides general notes and advice on using replication for specific solution types.

For information on using replication in a backup environment, including notes on the setup, backup procedure, and files to back up, see Section 17.3.1, “Using Replication for Backups”.

For advice and tips on using different storage engines on the master and slaves, see Section 17.3.4, “Using Replication with Different Master and Slave Storage Engines”.

Using replication as a scale-out solution requires some changes in the logic and operation of applications that use the solution. See Section 17.3.5, “Using Replication for Scale-Out”.

For performance or data distribution reasons, you may want to replicate different databases to different replication slaves. See Section 17.3.6, “Replicating Different Databases to Different Slaves”

As the number of replication slaves increases, the load on the master can increase and lead to reduced performance (because of the need to replicate the binary log to each slave). For tips on improving your replication performance, including using a single secondary server as a replication master, see Section 17.3.7, “Improving Replication Performance”.

For guidance on switching masters, or converting slaves into masters as part of an emergency failover solution, see Section 17.3.8, “Switching Masters During Failover”.

To secure your replication communication, you can encrypt the communication channel. For step-by-step instructions, see Section 17.3.9, “Setting Up Replication to Use Encrypted Connections”.