ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL does not support MyISAM. Use InnoDB instead, which is fully supported and works with all managed service capabilities.
Storage engine support
| Storage engine | Supported for user-created tables |
|---|---|
| InnoDB | Yes |
| MyISAM | No |
Why MyISAM is not supported
Data integrity defects. MyISAM has fundamental flaws in its data integrity protection mechanism that can cause data corruption or loss. Most of these flaws are design issues and cannot be fixed without breaking compatibility.
Manual recovery required. If MyISAM data is corrupted, you must manually restore most of it.
No meaningful I/O advantage. MyISAM is not optimized for the I/O model used by ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL and provides no significant performance advantage over InnoDB in this environment.
Industry has moved on. Starting with MySQL 5.7, MyISAM is optional and the MySQL system tables themselves have migrated to InnoDB. MySQL 8.0 continues this direction.
Migrate from MyISAM to InnoDB
For most applications, you need to only modify the table creation code to complete the migration.