Use PLAN REPLAYER to Save and Restore the On-Site Information of a Cluster

When you locate and troubleshoot the issues of a TiDB cluster, you often need to provide information on the system and the execution plan. To help you get the information and troubleshoot cluster issues in a more convenient and efficient way, the PLAN REPLAYER command is introduced in TiDB v5.3.0. This command enables you to easily save and restore the on-site information of a cluster, improves the efficiency of troubleshooting, and helps you more easily archive the issue for management.

The features of PLAN REPLAYER are as follows:

• Exports the information of a TiDB cluster at an on-site troubleshooting to a ZIP-formatted file for storage.
• Imports into a cluster the ZIP-formatted file exported from another TiDB cluster. This file contains the information of the latter TiDB cluster at an on-site troubleshooting.

Use PLAN REPLAER to export cluster information

You can use PLAN REPLAYER to save the on-site information of a TiDB cluster. The export interface is as follows:

PLAN REPLAYER DUMP EXPLAIN [ANALYZE] sql-statement;

Based on sql-statement, TiDB sorts out and exports the following on-site information:

• TiDB version
• TiDB configuration
• TiDB session variables
• TiDB SQL bindings
• The table schema in sql-statement
• The statistics of the table in sql-statement
• The result of EXPLAIN [ANALYZE] sql-statement

Examples of exporting cluster information

use test;
create table t(a int, b int);
insert into t values(1,1), (2, 2), (3, 3);
analyze table t;

plan replayer dump explain select * from t;

PLAN REPLAYER DUMP packages the table information above into a ZIP file and returns the file identifier as the execution result. This file is a one-time file. After the file is downloaded, TiDB will delete it.

MySQL [test]> plan replayer dump explain select * from t;
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Dump_link                                                        |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| replayer_single_JOGvpu4t7dssySqJfTtS4A==_1635750890568691080.zip |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.015 sec)

Because the file cannot be downloaded on MySQL Client, you need to use the TiDB HTTP interface and the file identifier to download the file:

http://${tidb-server-ip}:${tidb-server-status-port}/plan_replayer/dump/${file_token}

${tidb-server-ip}:${tidb-server-status-port} is the address of any TiDB server in the cluster. For example:

curl http://127.0.0.1:10080/plan_replayer/dump/replayer_single_JOGvpu4t7dssySqJfTtS4A==_1635750890568691080.zip > plan_replayer.zip

Use PLAN REPLAYER to import cluster information

With an existing ZIP file exported using PLAN REPLAYER, you can use the PLAN REPLAYER import interface to restore the on-site information of a cluster to any other TiDB cluster. The syntax is as follows:

PLAN REPLAYER LOAD 'file_name';

In the statement above, file_name is the name of the ZIP file to be exported.

For example:

PLAN REPLAYER LOAD 'plan_replayer.zip';