MySQL 5.6

[madeforspace]

Hi All

I was looking to do a small project using the latest version of Magento 2.0.6.

I checked the requirements and see that it is now asking for MySQL 5.6 and PHP7.

I am fine with the PHP7 but my Hosting provider has told me that if I want MySQL 5.6 I will need to upgrade from my current 5.3.

They have told me that this upgrade will cause downtime (understandable) but that I will also have to change all the passwords for my current databases as there is different encoding.

This is a real pain for me to do as I have a lot of clients happily using 5.3, so my question is this, will Magento 2.0.6 work at all with MySQL 5.3? If it will, is it safe or advisable to do so?

Any tips or advice greatly appreciated.

[SindreM · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately not. Magento 2 uses specific features which are only available in MySQL 5.6 so there is no way around the upgrade. MySQL 5.3 is really old so an upgrade is recommended anyway. PHP 7 is not a requirement, though. It will work with PHP 5.5+. See http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/system-requirements.html

[madeforspace]

Thanks for your reply.

I thought that may be the case but just wanted to check.

[JLHC]

If you are just planning to do a small project with Magento 2, you may want to just go with a basic server or hosting service that supports Magento 2 while leave the current server as is. 

If you plan to transition all of your websites to Magento 2 down the road, instead of taking a risk and also face downtime by upgrading your current server to MySQL 5.6, I'll suggest setting up a new server with MySQL 5.6 and move your websites over to the new server.