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Vertical Scale MariaDB Cluster

This guide will show you how to use KubeDB Enterprise operator to update the resources of a MariaDB cluster database.

Before You Begin

• At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

• Install KubeDB Community and Enterprise operator in your cluster following the steps here.

• You should be familiar with the following KubeDB concepts:

  • MariaDB
  • Clustering
  • MariaDBOpsRequest
  • Vertical Scaling Overview

To keep everything isolated, we are going to use a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

Apply Vertical Scaling on Cluster

Here, we are going to deploy a MariaDB cluster using a supported version by KubeDB operator. Then we are going to apply vertical scaling on it.

Prepare MariaDB Cluster

Now, we are going to deploy a MariaDB cluster database with version 10.5.23.

Vertical Scaling for MariaDB Standalone can be performed in the same way as MariaDB Cluster. Only remove the spec.replicas field from the below yaml to deploy a MariaDB Standalone.

Deploy MariaDB Cluster

In this section, we are going to deploy a MariaDB cluster database. Then, in the next section we will update the resources of the database using MariaDBOpsRequest CRD. Below is the YAML of the MariaDB CR that we are going to create,

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1
kind: MariaDB
metadata:
  name: sample-mariadb
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "10.5.23"
  replicas: 3
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut

Let’s create the MariaDB CR we have shown above,

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2025.5.30/docs/guides/mariadb/scaling/vertical-scaling/cluster/example/sample-mariadb.yaml
mariadb.kubedb.com/sample-mariadb created

Now, wait until sample-mariadb has status Ready. i.e,

$ kubectl get mariadb -n demo
NAME             VERSION    STATUS     AGE
sample-mariadb    10.5.23     Ready     3m46s

Let’s check the Pod containers resources,

$ kubectl get pod -n demo sample-mariadb-0 -o json | jq '.spec.containers[].resources'
{
  "limits": {
    "cpu": "500m",
    "memory": "1Gi"
  },
  "requests": {
    "cpu": "500m",
    "memory": "1Gi"
  }
}

You can see the Pod has the default resources which is assigned by KubeDB operator.

We are now ready to apply the MariaDBOpsRequest CR to update the resources of this database.

Vertical Scaling

Here, we are going to update the resources of the database to meet the desired resources after scaling.

Create MariaDBOpsRequest

In order to update the resources of the database, we have to create a MariaDBOpsRequest CR with our desired resources. Below is the YAML of the MariaDBOpsRequest CR that we are going to create,

apiVersion: ops.kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: MariaDBOpsRequest
metadata:
  name: mdops-vscale
  namespace: demo
spec:
  type: VerticalScaling
  databaseRef:
    name: sample-mariadb
  verticalScaling:
    mariadb:
      resources:
        requests:
          memory: "1.2Gi"
          cpu: "0.6"
        limits:
          memory: "1.2Gi"
          cpu: "0.6"

Here,

• spec.databaseRef.name specifies that we are performing vertical scaling operation on sample-mariadb database.
• spec.type specifies that we are performing VerticalScaling on our database.
• spec.VerticalScaling.mariadb specifies the desired resources after scaling.

Let’s create the MariaDBOpsRequest CR we have shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2025.5.30/docs/guides/mariadb/scaling/vertical-scaling/cluster/example/mdops-vscale.yaml
mariadbopsrequest.ops.kubedb.com/mdops-vscale created

Verify MariaDB Cluster resources updated successfully

If everything goes well, KubeDB Enterprise operator will update the resources of MariaDB object and related PetSets and Pods.

Let’s wait for MariaDBOpsRequest to be Successful. Run the following command to watch MariaDBOpsRequest CR,

$ kubectl get mariadbopsrequest -n demo
Every 2.0s: kubectl get mariadbopsrequest -n demo
NAME                     TYPE              STATUS       AGE
mdops-vscale        VerticalScaling      Successful    3m56s

We can see from the above output that the MariaDBOpsRequest has succeeded. Now, we are going to verify from one of the Pod yaml whether the resources of the database has updated to meet up the desired state, Let’s check,

$ kubectl get pod -n demo sample-mariadb-0 -o json | jq '.spec.containers[].resources'
{
  "limits": {
    "cpu": "600m",
    "memory": "1288490188800m"
  },
  "requests": {
    "cpu": "600m",
    "memory": "1288490188800m"
  }
}

The above output verifies that we have successfully scaled up the resources of the MariaDB database.

Cleaning Up

To clean up the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

$ kubectl delete mariadb -n demo sample-mariadb
$ kubectl delete mariadbopsrequest -n demo mdops-vscale