What are best practices for using group replication?

Best Practices for Using Group Replication

Group Replication provides high availability and data consistency. Here are some best practices to consider:

• Network Configuration: Ensure that all nodes in the group can communicate with one another with low latency. Use a reliable network setup.
• Monitoring: Use monitoring tools to check the health of your group and individual nodes. Tools like MySQL Enterprise Monitor can be beneficial.
• Consistent Configuration: Keep the configuration of all nodes in the group similar to avoid discrepancies. This includes settings like buffer size, time zone, and user privileges.
• Regular Backups: Always backup data regularly. Though group replication offers redundancy, it's crucial to have a backup strategy.
• Test Failover Scenarios: Regularly conduct failover tests to ensure that your group can handle sudden node failures without data loss.
• Use Transactional Storage Engine: Ensure that you are using only InnoDB storage engine for tables that need to be part of the group replication.