Keeping a MySQL installation up and running can be quite tricky at times, especially when having many servers to manage and monitor. In the replication tutorials at the annual MySQL Users' Conference, we demonstrate how to set up replication appropriately and also how to handle various issues that can arise.
Many of these procedures are routine: bring down the server, edit
the configuration file, bring the server up again, start a
mysql client and add a user, etc.
It has always annoyed me that these procedures are perfect candidates for automation, but that we do not have the necessary interfaces to manipulate an entire installation of MySQL servers.
If there were an interface with a relatively small set of primitives—re-directing servers, bringing servers down, add a line to the configuration file, etc.—it would be possible to create pre-canned procedures that can just be executed.
To that end, …
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