Using read-replicas in YugabyteDB for DR

Question

[Question posted by a user on YugabyteDB Community Slack]

I’m trying to understand the tolerance failure in YugabyteDB. My scenario is as follows: Universe is setup with primary data cluster and 1 read replica cluster, max_stale_read_bound_time_ms = 60. And the primary data cluster got wipe out (lost all data).

Questions:

1. Would we be able to rebuild the primary data cluster with the read replica cluster?
2. Can the read replica cluster become the primary data cluster?

Answer 1

The answer is no to both.

xCluster is what you want to use for DR.

The design point for read-replicas in YugabyteDB is not for DR, but rather to bring data closer to where data is being read from. And read replicas have no yb-master. Without a yb-master, one cannot read from it.