On 02Nov2025 I was effectively forced to migrate my blog site’s database from mySQL to MariaDB. Fortunately open-source MariaDB is advertised as compatible with mySQL, so all I did during the migration was:
- Replace the mySQL database in the blog site Docker container with an empty MariaDB database by creating a new Docker volume for MariaDB.
- Start the blog container, restore the WordPress plugins, and restore the most recent database backup. Remember the MariaDB is compatible with mySQL!
- Restart the blog container.
I have now been running the blog site with MariaDB for a week, so what have I noticed?
- The server is no longer running out of disk space due to frequently created large log files in the database volume (previously mySQL, but now MariaDB). Was there an underlying problem in mySQL?
- I had been using MariaDB for my ownCloud database in a separate Docker container, but, now that I am running 2 instances of MariaDB in separate containers, there are NO interactions, even though the same database software is being used by both containers! Note that I could, in future, use different versions if necessary.
- MariaDB feels that it is running faster than mySQL, but, while I have no data to prove this, it is no longer creating any log files, so my feeling may not be just subjective.
- Not using mySQL means that I am no longer dependent on Oracle support for my databases. Note that I have, for a long time, been using software applications and platforms supported by open-source communities (LibreOffice, WordPress, Linux, Lulu.com, ownCloud, Eclipse, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, GraphViz, and now MariaDB).