Managing Database Replication

Use this skill to reason about replication architecture, operational tradeoffs, and application behavior under lag or failover.

Clarify First

• Primary-replica versus multi-region versus logical replication use case.
• Read scaling, disaster recovery, or analytics goals.
• Tolerance for replication lag.
• Expected failover behavior and operational ownership.
• Which workloads can safely read from replicas.

Key Concerns

• Read-after-write consistency.
• Replication lag and its user-facing consequences.
• Failover timing and split-brain avoidance.
• Schema change coordination across replicated nodes.
• Backup and restore interactions with replication topology.

Output

• Recommended replication stance and tradeoffs.
• Risks around lag, stale reads, or failover.
• Safe workload placement guidance.
• Monitoring and validation priorities.

Common Mistakes

• Sending freshness-sensitive reads to replicas.
• Ignoring lag during deployments or backfills.
• Treating failover as instant without rehearsing it.
• Forgetting that replication does not replace backups.