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, availability and database functionality, especially for those workloads which predominately access data by the primary key.

As always, the webinar is free of charge but you will need to register here.

Time:

• Wed, Jul 14: 06:00 Hawaii time
• Wed, Jul 14:  09:00 Pacific time (America)
• Wed, Jul 14: 10:00 Mountain time (America)
• Wed, Jul 14: 11:00 Central time (America)
• Wed, Jul 14: 12:00 Eastern time (America)
• Wed, Jul 14: 16:00 UTC
• Wed, Jul 14: 17:00 Western European time
• Wed, Jul 14: 18:00 Central European time
• Wed, Jul 14: 19:00 Eastern European time

If you can’t make the live webinar then register anyway and you’ll get sent a link to the recording after the event.

Configure MySQL Server nodes for MySQL Cluster

The new version of MySQL Workbench (5.2.25) has just gone GA – see the Workbench BLOG for details.

So what’s the relevance to MySQL Cluster? If you have a Cluster that uses MySQL Servers to provide SQL access then you can now use MySQL Workbench to manage those nodes:

• Start & stop the mysqld processes
• Configure the per-mysqld configuration data held in my.cnf or my.ini

The reason that I describe the support as ‘partial’ is that these MySQL Servers are treated as independent entities (no concept of them being part of a Cluster) and there is currently no way to use it to configure or manage the other Cluster processes (data and management nodes). Having said that, what is there provides a lot of value and Workbench is designed to be very extensible  and so hopefully there can be further MySQL Cluster support in the future.

View MySQL Cluster status variables

In addition to MySQL Cluster-specific configuration parameters, you can also access the Cluster-specific status variables (these are the ones starting with ndb).

While I’ve focussed on what’s unique to MySQL Cluster, you can of course use the other Workbench features with MySQL Cluster – for example:

• Creating (or reverse-engineering) your data model
• Define your schema
• View/write data to your tables
• Create your SQL queries

In this example, I’ll use the “user” syslog facility name and so the first step is to make sure that syslog is configured to route those messages. If this hasn’t already been configured then add the following lines to /etc/rsyslog.conf:

# Log user messages to local files
user.*    /var/log/user

For the changes to take effect, restart the syslog service:

[root@ws1 etc]# service rsyslog restart
Shutting down system logger:                               [  OK  ]
Starting system logger:                                    [  OK  ]

Note that you should make those changes as root.

Still as root, start up a stream of  any additions to the new log file:

[root@ws1 etc]# tail -f /var/log/user

To tell Cluster to use Syslog, add this line into the [ndb_mgmd] section in config.ini:

LogDestination=SYSLOG:facility=user

and then start up your Cluster as normal.

You should now be able to see that MySQL Cluster information is being logged to /var/log/user.

You can adjust how much information is logged either through the config file or from the ndb_mgm tool, for example – to see when global checkpoints are written:

ndb_mgm> all clusterlog checkpoint=15
Executing CLUSTERLOG CHECKPOINT=15 on node 3 OK!
Executing CLUSTERLOG CHECKPOINT=15 on node 4 OK!

If you’re attending Oracle Open World then please indicate that you’d like to attend the MySQL Sunday when you register. If you aren’t planning to go to Oracle Open World but will be in the San Francisco area then buying a Discover pass (only $50 if you register by 16 July) will get you into the MySQL Sunday sessions. Register here.

For details on the presentations and speakers, check here.

Single host Cluster

A series of quick-start guides are now available to get you up and running with MySQL Cluster in as little time as possible; they are available for LINUX/Mac OS X, Windows and Solaris. The configuration is intentionally a simple one – 2 data nodes, 1 management node and 1 MySQL Server. Once you have this up and running, your next experiment may be to extend this over multiple hosts.

Download the Quick Start Guide for your platform below:

• MySQL Cluster Quick Start for Linux – also works for Mac OS X
• MySQL Cluster Quick Start for Windows
• MySQL Cluster Quick Start for Solaris

These links are also available from the MySQL Cluster download page.

The intent is that these guides should be simple to follow even if you have never tried MySQL Cluster (or even MySQL) before. Any comments or suggested improvements would be appreciated.

A description of all of the changes (fixes) that have gone into MySQL Cluster 7.1.4b (compared to 7.1.3) can be found in the MySQL Cluster 7.1.4b Change Log.

Join us for an Oracle MySQL Breakfast Seminar to better understand Oracle’s MySQL strategy and what’s new with MySQL!
Agenda:
09:00 a.m.    Welcome Coffee/Tea
09:30 a.m.    Oracle’s MySQL Strategy
10:00 a.m.    What’s New – The MySQL Server & MySQL Cluster
10.45 a.m.    Coffee/Tea Break
11:00 a.m.    What’s New – MySQL Enterprise & MySQL Workbench
11:45 a.m.    Q&A
12:00 noon    End of the Breakfast Seminar

Cost?
None, it’s a free event! But places are limited and the seminar is held on a first come first served basis, so register quickly!

Location:

Sun Microsystem’s Customer Briefing Center
Regis House
45 King William Street
London EC4R 9AN
Tel: (020) 7628 3000

Image courtesy of Anirudh Koul.

After extensive evaluations, Shopatron selected MySQL Cluster to power its back-end database, running the entire eCommerce fulfillment engine.

Since deploying MySQL Cluster, Shopatron have achieved:

• continuous service availability with sub-second failover and fully automated recovery
• real-time performance, reducing query times from 3 seconds to 2 milliseconds
• extreme levels of scalability on commodity hardware and open source software
• reduced licensing, support and operational management costs

Tune into this webinar where Shopatron’s CIO/COO and VP of Engineering will both share their experiences and best practices of implementing the MySQL Cluster database for eCommerce applications.

WHO:

Sean Collier, CIO & COO, Shopatron Inc.
David Dalrymple, VP of Engineering, Shopatron Inc.
Matthew Keep, MySQL Product Management

WHEN:

Thursday, October 22, 2009: 10:00 Pacific time (America)
Thu, Oct 22: 07:00 Hawaii time
Thu, Oct 22: 11:00 Mountain time (America)
Thu, Oct 22: 12:00 Central time (America)
Thu, Oct 22: 13:00 Eastern time (America)
Thu, Oct 22: 17:00 UTC
Thu, Oct 22: 18:00 Western European time
Thu, Oct 22: 19:00 Central European time
Thu, Oct 22: 20:00 Eastern European time

Tune into this webinar where you can hear from the Alan Dekok, one of the founders of the FreeRADIUS project and CEO of Network RADIUS, discuss the concepts and implementation of RADIUS services using the FreeRADIUS server and the MySQL Cluster database to deliver highly available and scalable AAA services.

As always, this webinar is free and you can register here. I will be manning the Q&A during the webinar.

In this session, you will learn about:

• potential AAA limitations as network environments grow
• advantages of deploying FreeRADIUS with MySQL Cluster
• Performance, sizing and deployment of an AAA environment using FreeRADIUS with MySQL Cluster
• customer case studies
• how to get started

WHO:

Alan Dekok, Founder of the FreeRADIUS project and CEO of Network RADIUS
Matthew Keep, MySQL Cluster Product Management

WHAT:

FreeRADIUS & MySQL Cluster: Scalable and Highly Available AAA Services web presentation.

WHEN:

Tuesday, October 20, 2009: 10:00 Central European time

Tue, Oct 20: 09:00 Western European time

Tue, Oct 20: 11:00 Eastern European time

The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A.

WHERE:

Simply access the web seminar from the comfort of your own office.

WHY:

To learn more about how you can use FreeRADIUS and MySQL Cluster 7.0

A summary of the changes can be found in the MySQL Cluster 7.0.8a Change Log