Trouble setting up an external DB

Caused by: liquibase.exception.DatabaseException: Error executing SQL CREATE INDEX idx_label_key_value ON cattle.label(key, value): Specified key was too long; max key length is 3072 bytes

I was able to connect remotely to database serve and do a status:
$ mysql -h rancher-data.myzone.com -u root -p cattle
mysql> status;

mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.46, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.3

Connection id: 288
Current database: cattle
Current user: root@#######
SSL: Not in use
Current pager: stdout
Using outfile: ''
Using delimiter: ;
Server version: 5.7.9 MySQL Community Server (GPL)
Protocol version: 10
Connection: ####### via TCP/IP
Server characterset: latin1
Db characterset: utf8
Client characterset: utf8
Conn. characterset: utf8
TCP port: 3306
Uptime: 27 min 50 sec

looks like this one:
https://github.com/rancher/rancher/issues/2045

I’m running mysql in a container from docker hub.