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How to do a local mysql database replication on an online server?

Are there widely accepted alternatives to 'master / slave' terminology for database replication?

  • I had an embarrassing experience recently. A colleague and I were discussing how to migrate our primary database server from one datacenter to another, when a group of college students (business and marketing) arrived for a tour. We were deep in the discussion, trying to ignore the interruption, when the teacher interrupted because she couldn't believe we were casually throwing around the terms 'master' and 'slave'. We explained that it was the technical terminology for database replication, created a long time ago, etc. etc., but wow that sounds lame and racist coming from two white males. Of course, 'master' and 'slave' is the dominant terminology for database replication in the open source and academic world. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/replication.html uses it. http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Replication,_Clustering,_and_Connection_Pooling uses it. Stack Overflow has a http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/master-slave for it. I'm not aware of any open source databases that use less loaded terminology for replication. Instead, master and slave are used everywhere - in the config files, documentation, and command line options. If you tried to use something else, database experts might not understand what you're talking about, and maybe even correct you. I'd love to start using some other terminology, and maybe even create patches for the open source databases, but I'm not sure what to suggest instead. Microsoft appears to have switched to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151176.aspx, and Oracle seems to use http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10705/config_simple.htm. However, it's unclear to me if anyone uses these terms outside of these commercial products, and if they would be considered vendor-specific language. Is anyone aware of alternative terms for replication that have wide acceptance in the open source and/or academic communities? Are there open source databases or forks that use different terminology for replication?

  • Answer:

    If the "master" node doesn't actually do any work then I prefer to refer to it as the coordinator node and the "slaves" as worker nodes. If the "master" node does do some work and merely uses the "slaves" as a backup or complement or some sort, then I prefer primary and secondary nodes.

Jeff Nelson at Quora Visit the source

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Other answers

A number of open source communities are using primary and replica. Drupal, for instance, made the change at: https://www.drupal.org/node/2275877

Adelle Frank

Salt Stack, an open source dev-ops configuration management and orchestration tool, uses the terms 'master' and 'minion'. While the word 'minion' is less politically incorrect than 'slave', it still connotes subservience; e.g. "a follower or underling of a powerful person, especially a servile or unimportant one."

David James

I find master and replica to be a good, descriptive alternative. I use these terms.For what it’s worth, just using the word “slave” is not itself racist and should not be non-politically correct. I understand that it’s a charged word for some people.Master shouldn’t have a connotation of being a slave-master at all. It’s a common metaphor to refer to a “master document” for example.

Bill Karwin

primary / replicated is another alternative that is used. smart folks in the tech industry figure out quickly the relationship and most welcome the change.

Cheryl Hensley

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