Self-hosted - which database & version?

If you are self-hosted, what is the recommended database & version?

So I found this was updated recently - Supported node versions for self-hosted installs of Ghost - and since I last checked, it’s moved from Node v10 to v14 :o - must make a note to check this more often.

I cannot find where the database software is specified? In 2017, Debian (the upstream for Ubuntu) moved away from MySQL - the package default-mysql-server serves up MariaDB 10.3 for current stable. Versions of MariaDB up to v10.5 are largely compatible with MySQL up to v5.7.

Unfortunately, after these versions, the divergence is growing. Recent threads talk about the Ghost developers using MySQL v8.

It should be noted that the Ubuntu package system adds a mysql-server package - which defaults to MySQL, moving from 5.7 to 8.0 as you upgrade Ubuntu. It looks like this switch is not yet back-ported to Debian.

In light of this, I would appreciate a comment from the Ghost team on: If you are self-hosted, what is the recommended database & version?

TIA!

The recommended database and version are documented in the prereqs - you can use MySQL 5.7 or 8.0

You might run into some issues with MySQL, and if you do, there’s an FAQ article about it:

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Thanks - doh, missed that!

So it looks like Ghost is tracking the Ubuntu mysql-server package, which looks today (April 2021) like it is not in Debian 11 upstream (bullseye), but does seem to be in Debian 12 / Unstable.

That kind of contradicts recent forum posts which say that MySQL8 is not yet recommended.

Does anyone know why Ghost prefers MySQL over MariaDB? Esp. as things like Galera cluster replication is included in MariaDB from v10.4.