diff --git a/tko/db.py b/tko/db.py
index 35efbc1..2336490 100644
--- a/tko/db.py
+++ b/tko/db.py
@@ -81,6 +81,22 @@
         self.max_delay = get_value("AUTOTEST_WEB", "global_db_max_retry_delay",
                                    "max_retry_delay", type=int, default=60)
 
+        # TODO(beeps): Move this to django settings once we have routers.
+        # On test instances mysql connects through a different port. No point
+        # piping this through our entire infrastructure when it is only really
+        # used for testing; Ideally we would specify this through django
+        # settings and default it to the empty string so django will figure out
+        # the default based on the database backend (eg: mysql, 3306), but until
+        # we have database routers in place any django settings will apply to
+        # both tko and afe.
+        # The intended use of this port is to allow a testing shard vm to
+        # update the master vm's database with test results. Specifying
+        # and empty string will fallback to not even specifying the port
+        # to the backend in tko/db.py. Unfortunately this means retries
+        # won't work on the test cluster till we've migrated to routers.
+        self.port = global_config.global_config.get_config_value(
+                "AUTOTEST_WEB", "global_db_port", type=str, default='')
+
 
     def _init_db(self):
         # make sure we clean up any existing connection
@@ -90,7 +106,7 @@
 
         # create the db connection and cursor
         self.con = self.connect(self.host, self.database,
-                                self.user, self.password)
+                                self.user, self.password, self.port)
         self.cur = self.con.cursor()