Overview The Skinny

In this blog post we explore various options for performance tuning MySQL server for better slave replication performance.

A Tungsten Cluster relies upon the Tungsten Replicator to move events from the master node to the slaves. Once the event has been transferred to the slave as THL on disk, the slave applier will then attempt to write it to the database. The Replicator can only apply events as fast as MySQL allows. If the MySQL server is somehow slow or blocking, then the Replicator will be as well.

A properly-tuned database server in addition to infrastructure and SysAdmin best practices will go quite a long way towards high-performance slave apply.

The Question Recently, a customer asked us:

During one of our load tests, we had a peak of 60k writes/min, averaging …

Overview The Skinny

Part of the power of Tungsten Clustering for MySQL / MariaDB is the ability to perform true zero-downtime maintenance, allowing client applications full access to the database layer, while taking out individual nodes for maintenance and upgrades. In this blog post we cover various types of maintenance scenarios, the best practices associated with each type of action, and the key steps to ensure the highest availability.

Important Questions Understand the Environment as a Whole First

There are a number of questions to ask when planning cluster maintenance that are critical to understand before starting.

For example:

1. What is the cluster topology?
   • Standalone (connectors write to single cluster master)
     Single cluster: …

Database Administration is a tough, often ungrateful job. Especially if you run a 24/7 business-critical MySQL or MariaDB deployment.

MySQL has proven to be a remarkably solid database which supports billions of dollars in revenue. On some level this very solidity creates a false sense of security. There are many things that can wrong at any given time, whether that is a change to your app, a bug in the database, hardware failure or just simply running out of disk space.

Percona recently conducted a poll: “What keeps you up at night?”

Not surprisingly, “Downtime/HA” is very high on the list.

While there are many challenging issues and tasks that a DBA must deal …

Overview The Skinny

Database Proxies provide a single entry point into MySQL for the calling client applications.

Proxies are wonderful tools to handle various situations like a master role switch to another node for maintenance, or for transparency with read and write connections.

However, when the time comes to perform the switch action, all of the calling clients have been funneled through the proxy, so identification of the calling host from the database itself becomes difficult.

The Problem What is going on?

Let’s illustrate how not knowing the source of a client connection can be an issue for the database administrator…

In the following diagram, three client applications connect to a Tungsten Cluster via the Connector proxy:

…

The Question Recently, a customer asked us:

How would we manually move the relay role from a failing node to a slave in a Composite Tungsten Cluster passive site?

The Answer The Long and the Short of It

There are two ways to handle this procedure manually when the usual switch command fails to work as expected. One is short and reasonably automated, and the other is much more detailed and manual.

Of course, the usual procedure is to just issue the switch command in the passive cluster:

use west
set policy maintenance
switch
set policy automatic

The below article describes what to do when the switch command does not move the relay role to another node.

SHORT

Below is the list of cctrl commands that would be run for the basic, short version, which (aside from handling policy changes) is really only …

Create a MySQL InnoDB Cluster using MySQL 8.0 has always been very easy. Certainly thanks to MySQL Shell and server enhancements like SET PERSIST and RESTART statement (see this post).

The most complicated part to deal with was the existing and none existing data. In fact GTID sets must be compatible.

Let me explain that with some examples:

Example 1 – empty servers

If you have empty servers with GTID enabled, manually creating credentials to connect to each MySQL instances will generate GTIDs that will prevent nodes to …

Overview The Skinny

Tungsten Clustering provides high availability, disaster recovery, and a host of other benefits for MySQL / MariaDB / Percona Server databases. In this blog post we will explore some of the shell aliases I use every day to administer various Tungsten Clusters.

Shell Aliases: A Quick Review Quick and Easy

A shell alias is simply a way to create a shortcut for frequently-used command sequences.

For example, I like to shorten the command clear to cls, i.e.

shell> alias cls=clear
shell> cls

If you create an alias on the fly it will be lost when the shell exits.

To save aliases so they are available to all shell sessions, update your shell’s profile or rc script.

For example, add the below line to the bottom of …

Overview The Skinny

In this blog post we will define what a split-brain scenario means in a MySQL database cluster, and then explore how a Tungsten MySQL database cluster reacts to a split-brain situation.

Agenda What’s Here?

• Define the term “split-brain”
• Briefly explore how the Tungsten Manager works to monitor the cluster health and prevent data corruption in the event of a network partition
• Also explore how the Tungsten Connector works to route writes
• Describe how a Tungsten MySQL database cluster reacts to a split-brain situation
• Illustrate various testing and recovery procedures

Split-Brain: Definition and Impact Sounds scary, and it is!

A split-brain occurs when a MySQL database cluster which normally has …

The Question Recently, a customer asked us:

We were wondering if the Connectors would be able to bind to localhost/127.0.0.1 instead of 0.0.0.0:3306? Since the Connector is installed on the application servers, all of the connections are coming from localhost. We would like to limit this exposure so that the 3306 port is not exposed externally. We ask because we are failing PCI checks that are able to access the database port externally.

The Answer YES!

You may set the IP address for the Connector to listen on by using the tpm command option: property=server.listen.address={IP_ADDRESS}

To force the Connector to listen on the localhost only use the following example:

shell> tools/tpm configure alpha --property=server.listen.address=127.0.0.1
shell> tools/tpm update --replace-release

Use the IP …

Overview The Skinny

In this blog post we will discuss how to use the Tungsten Connector keep-alive feature to ensure long-running MySQL & MariaDB/Percona Server client sessions stay connected in a Tungsten Cluster.

Agenda What’s Here?

• Briefly explore how the Tungsten Connector works
• Describe the Connector keep-alives – what are they and why do we use them?
• Discuss why the keep-alive feature is not available in Bridge mode and why
• Examine how to tune the keep-alive feature in the Tungsten Connector

Tungsten Connector: A Primer A Very Brief Summary

The Tungsten Connector is an intelligent MySQL database proxy located between the clients and the database servers, providing a single connection point, while routing queries to …