Announcing the future of Orchestrator: ProxySQL takes takes the helm
After years of uncertainty and a period of being archived, Orchestrator has officially joined the ProxySQL family. We are taking over the maintenance and development of this essential MySQL high-availability tool to ensure it remains the cornerstone of modern database infrastructure.
For over a decade, Orchestrator has been the silent guardian of the world’s most demanding MySQL environments. Originally authored by Shlomi Noach and developed through tenures at Outbrain, Booking.com, and GitHub, it became the industry standard for topology discovery, refactoring, and automated recovery.
However, as many in the community noticed, the project eventually hit a crossroads. Development slowed, and it was recently archived. At ProxySQL, we’ve always viewed Orchestrator not just as a complementary tool, but as the “missing half” of a truly resilient database architecture. Today, we are proud to announce that ProxySQL is officially the new home for Orchestrator.
Why ProxySQL?
The synergy between ProxySQL and Orchestrator is undeniable. While ProxySQL excels at routing traffic, shielding the database from application-level surges, and providing wire-speed security, Orchestrator provides the structural intelligence. It understands the topology, detects failures with surgical precision, and executes safe, automated recoveries.
By bringing Orchestrator under the ProxySQL umbrella, we are eliminating the friction between these two layers. Our goal is to create a seamless, “out-of-the-box” experience where ProxySQL and Orchestrator communicate natively to handle failovers without the need for complex custom scripts or fragile hooks.
What’s Changing? (And What’s Staying the Same)
Our primary goal is stability and modernization. We aren’t here to reinvent the wheel; we are here to make it spin faster and more reliably in modern environments.
1. Modernized Core and Cloud-Native Readiness
We have already begun the work of updating the underlying codebase. The latest version, 4.30.0, includes updated Go dependencies and protocol hardening. We are also doubling down on observability, with built-in Prometheus metrics and Kubernetes-native health checks (/health/live, /health/ready, /health/leader) to make Orchestrator feel at home in containerized environments.
2. Native ProxySQL Failover Hooks
While Orchestrator has always supported external scripts, we are introducing first-class, native ProxySQL integration. In version 4.30.0, you can configure ProxySQL hostgroups directly in the Orchestrator configuration. During a failover, Orchestrator will automatically:
- Pre-failover: Drain the old master in ProxySQL using
OFFLINE_SOFT. - Post-failover: Update the writer and reader hostgroups to reflect the new topology. This reduces recovery time and eliminates the risk of “split-brain” traffic routing during a transition.
3. Expanding the Horizon: PostgreSQL Support
While MySQL is where it all started, the database landscape is changing. We are thrilled to announce that we are expanding Orchestrator’s capabilities to include PostgreSQL streaming replication. This means Orchestrator can now discover Postgres topologies, detect failures, and perform automated failovers with the same level of confidence it brings to MySQL.
A Commitment to Open Source
Orchestrator is—and will always remain—open source under the Apache 2.0 license. We believe in the power of the community, and we invite you to be a part of this next chapter. Whether you are a long-time user or just starting out, we welcome your bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests on our GitHub repository.
We have updated the Contributing Guide and established a clear roadmap for the coming year. This isn’t just a maintenance project; it’s an evolution.
The Road Ahead
This is just the beginning. In the coming months, we will be focusing on deeper Raft consensus improvements, enhanced GTID handling, and a more intuitive web interface.
We want to thank Shlomi Noach for creating such an incredible piece of software, and the teams at GitHub and Percona for their stewardship over the years. We are honored to take the torch and lead Orchestrator into its next decade of service.
Stay tuned—the future of high availability has never looked brighter.