ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL no longer provides or supports instances that run the X-Engine storage engine.
End-of-sale timeline
| Date | What changes |
|---|---|
| November 1, 2024 (UTC+8) | New X-Engine RDS instances cannot be created or renewed. No further feature updates for X-Engine. |
| April 30, 2025 (UTC+8) | Existing X-Engine RDS instances are no longer supported. Database restoration (formerly instance cloning) is unavailable. Alibaba Cloud stops providing technical support, including but not limited to documentation and support tickets. |
Existing X-Engine instances remain fully operational until April 30, 2025 (UTC+8). After that date, continued use of X-Engine instances is at your own risk.
What this means for you
Migrate your X-Engine instances before April 30, 2025 to avoid service disruption. Two migration paths are available:
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Option 1 (recommended): Change the storage engine from X-Engine to InnoDB using Alibaba Cloud Data Management (DMS).
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Option 2: Enable the storage compression feature to reduce storage costs while staying on X-Engine until the deadline.
Option 1: Change the storage engine to InnoDB
Trade-offs to consider before migrating
Switching from X-Engine to InnoDB has two significant side effects:
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Storage doubles: X-Engine compresses data natively; InnoDB does not. After migration, the same dataset requires twice the storage capacity. Enable automatic storage expansion before migrating to prevent instance locking if storage is exhausted.
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IOPS increases, CPU utilization decreases: Without compression, InnoDB must read more disk sectors for the same data volume, increasing I/O operations and IOPS. At the same time, CPU utilization decreases after migration.
The DMS lock-free schema change feature is a paid feature. Review pricing details before proceeding.
Migrate using DMS (recommended)
Use the lock-free schema change feature of Alibaba Cloud Data Management (DMS) to migrate tables online. This keeps DML operations unblocked throughout the migration and is the safest approach for production workloads. See What is DMS?
Migrate using ALTER TABLE
As an alternative, run the following SQL statement directly on each table:
ALTER TABLE table_name ENGINE=InnoDB;Direct ALTER TABLE execution blocks DML operations for the entire duration and can take a long time for large tables. Use this approach only for non-production or small tables where downtime is acceptable.
Option 2: Enable storage compression
If staying on X-Engine until the April 30, 2025 deadline, enable the storage compression feature to reduce the unit storage cost of your existing instances.
What's next
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Restoration — understand the database restoration feature before it becomes unavailable for X-Engine instances
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Use the automatic storage expansion feature — enable this before migrating to InnoDB to prevent storage exhaustion