- Introduction
- Concepts
- Architecture
- Key Features
- Horizontal Scalability
- MySQL Compatible Syntax
- Replicate from and to MySQL
- Distributed Transactions with Strong Consistency
- Cloud Native Architecture
- Minimize ETL with HTAP
- Fault Tolerance & Recovery with Raft
- Automatic Rebalancing
- Deployment and Orchestration with Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker
- JSON Support
- Spark Integration
- Read Historical Data Without Restoring from Backup
- Fast Import and Restore of Data
- Hybrid of Column and Row Storage
- SQL Plan Management
- Open Source
- Online Schema Changes
- How-to
- Get Started
- Deploy
- Hardware Recommendations
- From Binary Tarball
- Orchestrated Deployment
- Geographic Redundancy
- Data Migration with Ansible
- Configure
- Secure
- Transport Layer Security (TLS)
- Generate Self-signed Certificates
- Monitor
- Migrate
- Maintain
- Common Ansible Operations
- Backup and Restore
- Use BR (recommended)
- Identify Abnormal Queries
- Scale
- Upgrade
- Troubleshoot
- Reference
- SQL
- MySQL Compatibility
- SQL Language Structure
- Attributes
- Data Types
- Functions and Operators
- Function and Operator Reference
- Type Conversion in Expression Evaluation
- Operators
- Control Flow Functions
- String Functions
- Numeric Functions and Operators
- Date and Time Functions
- Bit Functions and Operators
- Cast Functions and Operators
- Encryption and Compression Functions
- Information Functions
- JSON Functions
- Aggregate (GROUP BY) Functions
- Window Functions
- Miscellaneous Functions
- Precision Math
- List of Expressions for Pushdown
- SQL Statements
ADD COLUMN
ADD INDEX
ADMIN
ADMIN CANCEL DDL
ADMIN CHECKSUM TABLE
ADMIN CHECK [TABLE|INDEX]
ADMIN SHOW DDL [JOBS|QUERIES]
ALTER DATABASE
ALTER INSTANCE
ALTER TABLE
ALTER USER
ANALYZE TABLE
BEGIN
CHANGE COLUMN
COMMIT
CREATE DATABASE
CREATE INDEX
CREATE ROLE
CREATE TABLE LIKE
CREATE TABLE
CREATE USER
CREATE VIEW
DEALLOCATE
DELETE
DESC
DESCRIBE
DO
DROP COLUMN
DROP DATABASE
DROP INDEX
DROP ROLE
DROP TABLE
DROP USER
DROP VIEW
EXECUTE
EXPLAIN ANALYZE
EXPLAIN
FLUSH PRIVILEGES
FLUSH STATUS
FLUSH TABLES
GRANT <privileges>
GRANT <role>
INSERT
KILL [TIDB]
LOAD DATA
LOAD STATS
MODIFY COLUMN
PREPARE
RECOVER TABLE
RENAME INDEX
RENAME TABLE
REPLACE
REVOKE <privileges>
REVOKE <role>
ROLLBACK
SELECT
SET DEFAULT ROLE
SET [NAMES|CHARACTER SET]
SET PASSWORD
SET ROLE
SET TRANSACTION
SET [GLOBAL|SESSION] <variable>
SHOW ANALYZE STATUS
SHOW CHARACTER SET
SHOW COLLATION
SHOW [FULL] COLUMNS FROM
SHOW CREATE TABLE
SHOW CREATE USER
SHOW DATABASES
SHOW ENGINES
SHOW ERRORS
SHOW [FULL] FIELDS FROM
SHOW GRANTS
SHOW INDEXES [FROM|IN]
SHOW INDEX [FROM|IN]
SHOW KEYS [FROM|IN]
SHOW PRIVILEGES
SHOW [FULL] PROCESSSLIST
SHOW SCHEMAS
SHOW STATUS
SHOW [FULL] TABLES
SHOW TABLE REGIONS
SHOW TABLE STATUS
SHOW [GLOBAL|SESSION] VARIABLES
SHOW WARNINGS
SPLIT REGION
START TRANSACTION
TRACE
TRUNCATE
UPDATE
USE
- Constraints
- Generated Columns
- Partitioning
- Character Set
- SQL Mode
- Views
- Configuration
- Security
- Transactions
- System Databases
- Errors Codes
- Supported Client Drivers
- Garbage Collection (GC)
- Performance
- Overview
- Understanding the Query Execution Plan
- The Blocklist of Optimization Rules and Expression Pushdown
- Introduction to Statistics
- TopN and Limit Push Down
- Optimizer Hints
- Follower Read
- Check the TiDB Cluster Status Using SQL Statements
- Execution Plan Binding
- Statement Summary Table
- Tune TiKV
- Operating System Tuning
- Column Pruning
- Key Monitoring Metrics
- Alert Rules
- Best Practices
- TiSpark
- TiKV
- TiFlash
- TiDB Binlog
- Tools
- Overview
- Use Cases
- Download
- TiDB Operator
- Table Filter
- Backup & Restore (BR)
- Mydumper
- Syncer
- Loader
- Data Migration
- TiDB Lightning
- sync-diff-inspector
- PD Control
- PD Recover
- TiKV Control
- TiDB Control
- TiDB in Kubernetes
- FAQs
- Support
- Contribute
- Releases
- All Releases
- v3.1
- v3.0
- v2.1
- v2.0
- v1.0
- Glossary
You are viewing the documentation of an older version of the TiDB database (TiDB v3.1).
Follower Read
When a read hotspot appears in a Region, the Region leader can become a read bottleneck for the entire system. In this situation, enabling the Follower Read feature can significantly reduce the load of the leader, and improve the throughput of the whole system by balancing the load among multiple followers. This document introduces the use and implementation mechanism of Follower Read.
Overview
The Follower Read feature refers to using any follower replica of a Region to serve a read request under the premise of strongly consistent reads. This feature improves the throughput of the TiDB cluster and reduces the load of the leader. It contains a series of load balancing mechanisms that offload TiKV read loads from the leader replica to the follower replica in a Region. TiKV's Follower Read implementation guarantees the consistency of data reading; combined with Snapshot Isolation in TiDB, this implementation provides users with strongly consistent reads.
To achieve strongly consistent reads, the follower node currently needs to request the current execution progress from the leader node (that is ReadIndex
), which causes an additional network request overhead. Therefore, the main benefits of Follower Read are to isolate read requests from write requests in the cluster and to increase overall read throughput.
Usage
To enable TiDB's Follower Read feature, modify the value of the tidb_replica_read
session variable:
{{<copyable "sql">}}
set @@tidb_replica_read = '<target value>';
Scope: SESSION
Default: leader
This variable is used to set the data read mode expected by the current session.
- When the value of
tidb_replica_read
is set toleader
or an empty string, TiDB maintains its original behavior and sends all read operations to the leader replica to perform. - When the value of
tidb_replica_read
is set tofollower
, TiDB selects a follower replica of the Region to perform all read operations. - When the value of
tidb_replica_read
is set toleader-and-follower
, TiDB can select any replicas to perform read operations.
Implementation mechanism
Before the Follower Read feature was introduced, TiDB applied the strong leader principle and submitted all read and write requests to the leader node of a Region to handle. Although TiKV can distribute Regions evenly on multiple physical nodes, for each Region, only the leader can provide external services. The other followers can do nothing to handle read requests but receive the data replicated from the leader at all times and prepare for voting to elect a leader in case of a failover.
To allow data reading in the follower node without violating linearizability or affecting Snapshot Isolation in TiDB, the follower node needs to use ReadIndex
of the Raft protocol to ensure that the read request can read the latest data that has been committed on the leader. At the TiDB level, the Follower Read feature simply needs to send the read request of a Region to a follower replica based on the load balancing policy.
Strongly consistent reads
When the follower node processes a read request, it first uses ReadIndex
of the Raft protocol to interact with the leader of the Region, to obtain the latest commit index of the current Raft group. After the latest commit index of the leader is applied locally to the follower, the processing of a read request starts.
Follower replica selection strategy
Because the Follower Read feature does not affect TiDB's Snapshot Isolation transaction isolation level, TiDB adopts the round-robin strategy to select the follower replica. Currently, for the coprocessor requests, the granularity of the Follower Read load balancing policy is at the connection level. For a TiDB client connected to a specific Region, the selected follower is fixed, and is switched only when it fails or the scheduling policy is adjusted.
However, for the non-coprocessor requests, such as a point query, the granularity of the Follower Read load balancing policy is at the transaction level. For a TiDB transaction on a specific Region, the selected follower is fixed, and is switched only when it fails or the scheduling policy is adjusted.