MySQL Cluster

MySQL Cluster is a real-time open source transactional database designed for fast, always-on access to data under high throughput conditions. MySQL Cluster utilizes a “shared nothing” architecture which does not require any additional infrastructure investment and provides 99.999% data availability with no single point of failure. MySQL Cluster is most often used as an in-memory database, but can be configured to use disk-based data as well.

Application developers can easily integrate applications using their preferred database-independent method. MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition provides multiple, simultaneous data access using a variety of means including SQL, Direct APIs (C++/Java), LDAP, and Web Services.

Cluster automatically and transparently distributes data across multiple data nodes. It delivers extremely fast failover times so your applications can recover quickly. Cluster nodes automatically restart, recover, and configure themselves in case of failure providing a “zero admin” high availability solution.

The shared-nothing architecture means applications can start small and make incremental investments to increase capacity as demand grows. Typical response times for MySQL Cluster are in the range of a few milliseconds and MySQL Cluster has been proven to handle tens of thousands of distributed transactions per second.

• Instantly Responsive and Durable – Response time and throughput to meet the most demanding high volume enterprise applications with guaranteed persistence of data
• Linearly Scalable – Incrementally grow out applications as demand grows
• Easily Maintainable – Automated reliability and very durable with zero maintenance provides the perfect embedded solution
• Open Flexibility/Lower TCO – Open source and dual licensing significantly lower total cost of ownership without any vendor lock-in

Designed for 99.999% Availability

MySQL Cluster provides a fault tolerant architecture that ensures your organization's mission critical applications achieve 99.999% availability. This means less than 5 minutes downtime per year, including scheduled maintenance time. MySQL Cluster implements automatic node recoverability to ensure an application automatically fails over to another database node that contains a consistent data set, if one or more database nodes fail. Should all nodes fail due to hardware faults for example, MySQL Cluster ensures an entire system can be safely recovered in a consistent state by using a combination of checkpoints and log execution. Furthermore, MySQL Cluster ensures systems are available and consistent across geographies by enabling entire clusters to be replicated across regions.

High Performance Only a Main Memory Database Can Deliver

MySQL Cluster provides the response time and throughput to meet the most demanding high volume enterprise applications. MySQL Cluster achieves its performance advantage by being a main memory clustered database solution, which keeps all data in memory and limits IO bottlenecks by asynchronously writing transaction logs to disk. MySQL Cluster also enables servers to share processing within a cluster, taking full advantage of all hardware. Typical response times for MySQL Cluster are in the range of a few milliseconds and MySQL Cluster has been proven to handle tens of thousands of distributed transactions per second that are also replicated across database nodes.

Extremely Fast Automatic Failover

MySQL delivers extremely fast failover time with sub-second response so your applications can recover quickly in the event of application, network or hardware failure. MySQL Cluster uses synchronous replication to propagate transaction information to all the appropriate database nodes so applications can automatically fail over to another node extremely quickly. This eliminates the time consuming operation of recreating and replaying log files required by 'Shared-Disk' architectures to fail over successfully. Plus, MySQL Cluster database nodes are able to automatically restart, recover, and dynamically reconfigure themselves in case of failures without having to program advanced features into the application.

Flexible Distributed Architecture with No Single Point of Failure

The parallel server architecture combines database nodes, management server nodes, and application nodes that can be distributed across computers and geographies to ensure there is no single point of failure. Any node can be stopped or started without stopping the applications that use the database. And MySQL Cluster is highly configurable so you can implement the appropriate level of performance, scalability and fault tolerance to match your application requirements.

Significantly Reduce Costly Downtime

MySQL Cluster not only lowers up-front license costs with affordable commercial licensing under a dual licensing mechanism, but it also significantly reduces system downtime - the number one contributor to the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of database software. Furthermore, a highly portable standards-based environment allows you to cost-effectively distribute your applications using commodity hardware and open source software infrastructure.

Lower Maintenance Costs

MySQL Cluster is designed to be largely self-governing so very few system parameters actually need fine-tuning, further reducing the risk of costly errors. As a result, there are typically fewer conflicts with other software and hardware, and less need for manual intervention. This also means that MySQL Cluster will have a much lower maintenance costs, with less fine tuning required by Database Administrators.

Easy-to-use Administration

MySQL Cluster includes easy to use and powerful tools for administering your clustered environment. Command line tools enable you to monitor database nodes, control access to applications, and create and restore backups.

Services and Support

MySQL provides extensive consulting, training and technical support services to ensure the success of your next mission-critical database application project. MySQL has a proven track record gained through millions of successful customer deployments that can lower your risk and maximize return on investment.

Learn More About How to Use MySQL Cluster Today

Contact a MySQL technical consultant to learn more about how MySQL Cluster can be used to provide mainframe availability on commodity hardware.