Drupal MySQL 8 Migration Guide: Compatibility, Testing, and Hosting Considerations

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Source: Migrating Drupal from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 by Ricardo Sanz (September 1, 2025)

Ricardo Sanz of Metadrop provides a practical guide for upgrading Drupal sites from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8, a transition now especially relevant for Acquia-hosted projects. While Drupal 10 and 11 have long supported MySQL 8, the article cautions that contributed modules, legacy configurations, and custom code may still pose risks.

Sanz stresses thorough testing with real data in development environments, ideally supported by automated tests, to catch issues such as reserved keywords (groups), deprecated settings like tx_isolation, or collation differences affecting Unicode. Tools such as Aljibe (a DDEV extension for version-switching and automated testing) and Acquia’s MySQL 5.7/MariaDB compatibility driver can ease the migration process. The article also addresses special considerations for Drupal 7 sites and outlines environment-specific strategies for providers including Platform.sh, Pantheon, amazee.io, and AWS.

Reference: Migrating Drupal from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8 by Ricardo Sanz, Metadrop (1 September 2025)

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