Introduction
Storage engines are MySQL components that handle the SQL operations for different table types. For MySQL & MariaDB 10.2 and higher, the default storage engine is InnoDB. However, the default engine may be changed within the MySQL configuration.
Procedure
In order to change the default storage engine, the default-storage-engine option may be used withing the my.cnf (/etc/my.cnf):
default-storage-engine=name
Replace "name" with the storage engine of your choice. The change will take effect once MySQL has been restarted.
MariaDB has a excellent resource for choosing the right storage engine for you here.