The binary version for MySQL Cluster 7.1.5 has now been made available at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/cluster/

A description of all of the changes (fixes) that have gone into MySQL Cluster 7.1.5 (compared to 7.1.4) can be found in the MySQL Cluster 7.1.5 Change Log.

Connector/J has long provided an effective means to distribute read/write load across multiple MySQL server instances for Cluster or master-master replication deployments, but until version 5.1.13, managing such deployments frequently required a service outage to redeploy a new configuration.  Given that ease of scaling out by adding additional MySQL Cluster (server) instances is a key element in that product offering, which is also naturally targeted at deployments with very strict availability requirements, we had to add support for online changes of this nature.  It’s also critical for online upgrades – the other option is to take a MySQL Cluster server instance down hard, which loses any in-process transactions and generates application exceptions, if any application is trying to use that particular server instance.

Mark Matthews and I first …

In a previous blog post, I wrote about Connector/J’s failover policies, I described three triggers which cause Connector/J to re-balance (potentially selecting a new physical connection to another host):

1. At transaction boundaries (transactions are explicitly committed or rolled back)
2. A communication exception (SQL State starting with “08″) is encountered
3. When a SQLException matches conditions defined by user, using the extension points defined by the loadBalanceSQLStateFailover, loadBalanceSQLExceptionSubclassFailover or loadBalanceExceptionChecker properties.

Those conditions fit most needs very well, but there are situations where people are running with auto-commit enabled (no explicit transaction commit or rollback), and the end result is that Connector/J never …

On Wednesday 25 August, Johan Anderson and Mat keep will be presenting a free webinar on the best practices for deploying MySQL Cluster. If you’d like to attend then just register here.

Johan has years of MySQL Cluster professional services experience – and so if you’re interested in deploying a product ready MySQL Cluster database then this is a must-view session. Even if you can’t make it live, register anyway and you’ll be sent a link to the recording and charts afterwards.

Content

An invaluable session for those who are about to, or who already have, deployed MySQL Cluster. Delivered by the lead MySQL Cluster professional services consultant in Oracle, this session will present best practices on deploying MySQL Cluster in order to accelerate time to service with the highest levels of availability …

There is a new video available: Demonstration of installing, configuring and running MySQL Cluster (LINUX) to accompany the MySQL Cluster Quick Start guides. The Flash video video lasts for about 7 minutes.

If you aren’t able to view Flash on your device then a (poorer quality) version is included here – watch the Flash version if you’re able to!

openSUSE 11.3 Running MySQL Cluster

With the release of openSUSE 11.3 they announced the inclusion of MySQL Cluster. What does this mean as you could already install and run MySQL Cluster on openSUSE (and any other LINUX platform for that matter)? The change is that you can now use their tool (zypper) to install the MySQL Cluster RPMs and most importantly replace the ‘regular’ MySQL Server with the one that should be used with MySQL Cluster.

Personally I prefer installing MySQL Cluster from the tar ball as it gives me more control (for example, openSUSE is using MySQL Cluster 7.0 but I prefer to use 7.1 as that’s …

Many people use the MySQL MEMORY storage engine for applications where they don’t need their data to be highly available or even survive restarts. Where this works best is for applications that are dominated by reads and (obviously) where the data doesn’t need to survive any kinds of problems (or where it can be recovered from another source). Typical applications are :

• Caching of small tables to reduce the latency of database look-ups.
• Simple session management (i.e. with no analytics or reporting on the session data).
• Buffering of multiple updates for batched inserts into tables managed by other MySQL storage engines.  (Note requires additional custom application development).

While great for some applications (at least initially), as the application requirements start …

There is often confusion as to how it can be claimed that MySQL Cluster delivers in-memory performance while also providing durability (the “D” in ACID). This post explains how that can be achieved as well as how to mix and match scalability, High Availability and Durability.

MySQL Cluster deployment options

As an aside, the user can specify specific MySQL Cluster tables or columns to be stored on disk rather than in memory – this is a solution for extra capacity but you don’t need to take this performance hit just to have the data persisted to disk. This post focuses on the in-memory approach.

There is a great deal of flexibility in how you deploy MySQL Cluster with in-memory data – allowing the user to decide which features they want to make use of.

The simplest (and least common) topology …

Shortly after I wrote my last post regarding some advanced Connector/J load-balancing properties, Anirudh published a post describing configuration of RHEL LVS for load-balancing and failover of MySQL Cluster SQL nodes.  It’s an interesting post, and I admit I know very little about RHEL LVS, but it reminded me of problems I experienced when trying to set up load-balanced ColdFusion(!) servers at my last job, years back.  We ended up with a nice hardware load-balancer sitting in front of multiple ColdFusion web servers.  The problems we found were that our application depended upon session state, which was stored (of course) on a single web server.  The load-balancer allowed us to define sticky sessions, which is what we did, but it cost us.

We couldn’t really balance load – we could balance session counts, sort …

Mat Keep and I will be presenting this free webinar on Wednesday 14 July.

The MEMORY storage engine has been widely adopted by MySQL users to provide near-instant responsiveness with use cases such as caching and web session management. As these services evolve to support more users, so the scalability and availability demands can start to exceed the capabilities of the MEMORY storage engine.

The MySQL Cluster database, which itself can be implemented as a MySQL storage engine, is a viable alternative to address these evolving web service demands. MySQL Cluster can be configured and run in the same way as the MEMORY storage engine (ie on a single host with no replication and no persistence). As web services evolve, any of these attributes can then be added in any combination to deliver higher levels of scalability, …