Distributed Recovery If group members and the joining member are set up with the clone plugin (see Section 18.5.3.2, “Cloning for Distributed Recovery” ), and the difference in transactions between the joining member and the group exceeds the threshold set for a remote cloning operation ( group_replication_clone_threshold ), Group Replication begins distributed recovery with a remote cloning operation. A remote cloning operation is also carried out if required transactions are no longer present in any group member’s binary log files. During a remote cloning operation, the existing data on the joining member is removed, and replaced with a copy of the donor’s data. When the remote cloning operation is complete and the joining member has restarted, state transfer from a donor’s binary log is carried out to get the transactions that the group applied while the remote cloning operation was in progress. If there is not a large transaction gap, or if the clone plugin is not installed, Group Replication proceeds directly to state transfer from a donor’s binary log. For state transfer from a donor’s binary log, a connection is established between the joining member and the donor and state transfer begins. This interaction with the donor continues until the server joining the group’s applier thread processes the view change log event that corresponds to the view change triggered when the server joining the group came into the group. In other words, the server joining the State Transfer: Catching Up 3748 Figure 18.9 A Member Joins