Try It Out

Spin up ProxySQL in front of a MySQL backend with Docker Compose. This demonstrates using ProxySQL's admin interface to register a backend server and route client traffic to it.

Save the following to a proxysql-compose.yaml file in your working directory:

services:
  mysql:
    image: reg.mini.dev/mysql:latest
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: Minimus!
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "mysqladmin ping -h 127.0.0.1 -uroot -pMinimus!"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 10

  proxysql:
    image: reg.mini.dev/proxysql:latest
    depends_on:
      mysql:
        condition: service_healthy
    ports:
      - "6032:6032"
      - "6033:6033"

  client:
    image: reg.mini.dev/mariadb:latest
    entrypoint: ["mariadb"]
    network_mode: "service:proxysql"
    profiles: ["tools"]

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml up -d

Wait for the backend to become healthy:

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml ps

Connect to ProxySQL's admin interface (default credentials are admin/admin) and register the MySQL backend as a server in hostgroup 10, then add a user ProxySQL will authenticate client connections as. ProxySQL's admin user only accepts connections from 127.0.0.1 as a security default, and the admin interface requires the mysql_native_password authentication plugin, which recent MySQL client libraries no longer ship. The client service below works around both: network_mode: "service:proxysql" puts it inside ProxySQL's own network namespace so 127.0.0.1 reaches it as a local connection, and it's a MariaDB client, which still supports mysql_native_password, instead of a mysql client:

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml run --rm client -h 127.0.0.1 -P 6032 -u admin -padmin -e "
INSERT INTO mysql_servers(hostgroup_id, hostname, port) VALUES (10, 'mysql', 3306);
INSERT INTO mysql_users(username, password, default_hostgroup) VALUES ('root', 'Minimus\!', 10);
LOAD MYSQL SERVERS TO RUNTIME;
SAVE MYSQL SERVERS TO DISK;
LOAD MYSQL USERS TO RUNTIME;
SAVE MYSQL USERS TO DISK;
"

Query the MySQL backend through ProxySQL's client interface on port 6033, instead of connecting to the backend directly:

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml run --rm client -h 127.0.0.1 -P 6033 -u root -pMinimus\! -e "show databases;"

ProxySQL forwards the query to the backend server and returns the result set:

+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| performance_schema |
| sys                |
+--------------------+

Check ProxySQL's connection pool stats to confirm the query above was actually routed to the backend server rather than served directly:

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml run --rm client -h 127.0.0.1 -P 6032 -u admin -padmin -e "SELECT hostgroup, srv_host, srv_port, Queries FROM stats_mysql_connection_pool;"

+-----------+----------+----------+---------+
| hostgroup | srv_host | srv_port | Queries |
+-----------+----------+----------+---------+
| 10        | mysql    | 3306     | 1       |
+-----------+----------+----------+---------+

Stop and remove all containers and volumes:

docker compose -f proxysql-compose.yaml down -v

Technical Considerations

The Proxysql image provided by Minimus is a slim, security-hardened alternative to the public image from Docker Hub. The images are largely interchangeable, with a few differences as noted below.

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