MySQL Cluster 7.1 introduced the ndbinfo database which contains views giving real-time access to a whole host of information that helps you monitor and tune your MySQL Cluster deployment. Because this data can be accessed through regular SQL, various systems can be configured to monitor the Cluster. This post gives one example, extending MySQL Enterprise Monitor to keep an eye on the amount of free memory on the data nodes (through a graph) and then raise an alarm when it starts to run low – even generating SNMP traps if that’s what you need.

One of the features of MySQL Enterprise Monitor is that you can define custom data collectors and that those data collectors can run SQL queries to get the data. The information retrieved by those custom data collectors can then be used with rules that the user defines through the MySQL Enterprise …

The binary version for MySQL Cluster 6.3.33 has now been made available at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/cluster/6.3.html#downloads

A description of all of the changes (fixes) that have gone into MySQL Cluster 6.3.33 (compared to 6.3.32) can be found in the MySQL Cluster 6.3.33 ChangeLog .

Whether you’re working with MySQL, MySQL Cluster, or any other RDBMS, every database with a requirement for persistent data should always have a backup. As a Production DBA you’re the insurance policy to safeguard the data. Bad things do happen. Backups are your safety net to ensure you always have a way to recover should the worst happen and the database becomes irreparable.

There are many ways to produce a consistent backup of MySQL, I have listed a few of the options available below; Remember backups are your safety net, failing to retrieve a consistent backup when you need it most can be a very career limiting move, so no matter what backup method you choose always test your backups!

Logical Backups
The ever popular mysqldump is a backup and export utility provided with the MySQL binaries …

At the 2010 MySQL User Conference, Jonas Oreland presented on the work he’s been doing on improving the performance of joins when using MySQL Cluster – the slides are available for download. While not ready for production systems, a preview version is available for you to try out. The purpose of this blog is to step through  testing an example query as well as presenting the results (SPOILER: In one configuration, I got a 50x speedup!).

SPJ is by no means complete and there are a number of constraints as to which queries benefit (and I’ll give an example of one that didn’t). For details of the current (April 2010) software and limitations, check out …

MySQL Cluster 7.1 was declared GA earlier this month and today (29 April) you have the chance to learn all about it by registering for this free webinar.

In blazing speed we will cover the most important features of MySQL Cluster 7.1: NDB$INFO; MySQL Cluster Connector/Java and other features that push the limits of MySQL Cluster into new workloads and communities.

NDB$INFO presents real-time usage statistics from the MySQL Cluster data nodes as a series of SQL tables, enabling developers and administrators to monitor database performance and optimize their applications.

Designed for Java developers, the MySQL Cluster Connector for Java implements an easy-to-use and high performance native Java interface and OpenJPA plug-in that …

SPJ (preview, not production ready) is a new feature allowing some types of JOINs to be pushed down and executed inside the data nodes! This allows for, in many cases, much faster JOIN execution.

Now we would love to get your feedback on this new feature:

• Does what we have right now improve performance for you?
• Are there other types of JOINs we should support in order to improve performance in you application (currently only eq_ref is supported)?
• What application are you using?

There are some limitations currently:

• node failure handling of SPJ is not complete, so if a data node crash, there are side-effects.
• only eq_ref is supported - other JOINs are executed as normal.
• Don't put this in production.
  

Obtaining the MySQL Cluster SPJ preview version:

• You must know how to build MySQL Cluster …

MySQL Cluster 7.1 has been declared GA – including MySQL Cluster Connector for Java and MySQL Cluster Manager – see http://www.mysql.com/products/database/cluster/ for details.

At last year’s LDAP-Con event, Ludo from OpenDS and Howard from OpenLDAP presented on the work that they’d done on using MySQL Cluster as the scalable, real-time data store for LDAP directories (going directly to the NDB API rather than using SQL). Symas now provide their implementation (back-ndb) for OpenLDAP.

You can view the charts at http://www.mysql.com/customers/view/?id=1041

So there’s a bit of a swelling around the idea of NoSQL. That is, databases that don’t have an SQL interface in front of them – with the promise of better performance. With a well designed backend, this is no doubt the case.

A flexible query language is rather useful though. I think we’ll see the rise of AlsoSQL. That is systems that present a fast and simple protocol along with a SQL interface.

This hybrid system has seen use for many years. MySQL Cluster is one such example. SQL through MySQL Server, NoSQL through NDB API.

With Drizzle, I feel we’ll be in a pretty good position to offer non-sql based protocols and access methods to existing storage engines.

At the UC 2010 I will have a session on MySQL Cluster Performance Tuning. This session will address a lot of the most common performance problems I see in my day to day job with Cluster. A small excerpt of the talk is below here and many other things will be addressed in the session (JOINs, schema optimization, batching, indexes, parameter tuning etc). I hope to see you there!

First a bit on ndb_autoincrement_prefetch_sz and then blobs!

ndb_autoincrement_prefetch_sz

One thing is contention on auto_increments, which can really slow down performance.
By default the ndb_autoincrement_prefetch_sz=1. This means that the mysqld will cache one auto_increment number and then go down to the data …