MySQL Cluster

MySQL Cluster is a technology providing shared-nothing clustering and auto-sharding for the MySQL database management system. It is designed to provide high availability and high throughput with low latency, while allowing for near linear scalability. MySQL Cluster is implemented through the NDB or NDBCLUSTER storage engine for MySQL ("NDB" stands for Network Database).
Architecture.
MySQL Cluster is designed around a distributed, multi-master ACID compliant architecture with no single point of failure. MySQL Cluster uses automatic sharding (partitioning) to scale out read and write operations on commodity hardware and can be accessed via SQL and Non-SQL (NoSQL) APIs
Replication.
Internally MySQL Cluster uses synchronous replication through a two-phase commit mechanism in order to guarantee that data is written to multiple nodes upon committing the data. (This is in contrast to what is usually referred to as "MySQL Replication", which is .) Two copies (known as "replicas") of the data are required to guarantee availability. MySQL Cluster automatically creates “node groups” from the number of replicas and data nodes specified by the user. Updates are synchronously replicated between members of the node group to protect against data loss and support fast failover between nodes.
It is also possible to replicate asynchronously between clusters; this is sometimes referred to as "MySQL Cluster Replication" or "geographical replication". This is typically used to replicate clusters between data centers for disaster recovery or to reduce the effects of network latency by locating data physically closer to a set of users. Unlike standard MySQL replication, MySQL Cluster's geographic replication uses optimistic concurrency control and the concept of Epochs to provide a mechanism for conflict detection and resolution, enabling active/active clustering between data centers.
Starting with MySQL Cluster 7.2, support for synchronous replication between data centers was supported with the Multi-Site Clustering feature.
Horizontal data partitioning (auto-sharding).
MySQL Cluster is implemented as a fully distributed multi-master database ensuring updates made by any application or SQL node are instantly available to all of the other nodes accessing the cluster, and each data node can accept write operations.
Data within MySQL Cluster (NDB) tables is automatically partitioned across all of the data nodes in the system. This is done based on a hashing algorithm based on the primary key on the table, and is transparent to the end application. Clients can connect to any node in the cluster and have queries automatically access the correct shards needed to satisfy a query or commit a transaction. MySQL Cluster is able to support cross-shard queries and transactions.
Users can define their own partitioning schemes. This allows developers to add “distribution awareness” to applications by partitioning based on a sub-key that is common to all rows being accessed by high running transactions. This ensures that data used to complete transactions is localized on the same shard, thereby reducing network hops.
Hybrid storage.
MySQL Cluster allows datasets larger than the capacity of a single machine to be stored and accessed across multiple machines.
MySQL Cluster maintains all indexed columns in distributed memory. Non-indexed columns can also be maintained in distributed memory or can be maintained on disk with an in-memory page cache. Storing non-indexed columns on disk allows MySQL Cluster to store datasets larger than the aggregate memory of the clustered machines.
MySQL Cluster writes Redo logs to disk for all data changes as well as check pointing data to disk regularly. This allows the cluster to consistently recover from disk after a full cluster outage. As the Redo logs are written asynchronously with respect to transaction commit, some small number of transactions can be lost if the full cluster fails, however this can be mitigated by using geographic replication or multi-site cluster discussed above. The current default asynchronous write delay is 2 seconds, and is configurable. Normal single point of failure scenarios do not result in any data loss due to the synchronous data replication within the cluster.
When a MySQL Cluster table is maintained in memory, the cluster will only access disk storage to write Redo records and checkpoints. As these writes are sequential and limited random access patterns are involved, MySQL Cluster can achieve higher write throughput rates with limited disk hardware compared to a traditional disk-based caching RDBMS. This checkpointing to disk of in-memory table data can be disabled (on a per-table basis) if disk-based persistence isn't needed.
Shared nothing.
MySQL Cluster is designed to have no single point of failure. Provided that the cluster is set up correctly, any single node, system, or piece of hardware can fail without the entire cluster failing. Shared disk (SAN) is not required. The interconnects between nodes can be standard Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, InfiniBand, or SCI interconnects.
SQL and NoSQL APIs.
As MySQL Cluster stores tables in data nodes, rather than in the MySQL Server, there are multiple interfaces available to access the database:
MySQL Cluster Manager.
Part of the commercial MySQL Cluster CGE, MySQL Cluster Manager is a tool designed to simplify the creation and administration of the MySQL Cluster CGE database by automating common management tasks, including on-line scaling, upgrades, backup/restore and reconfiguration. MySQL Cluster Manager also monitors and automatically recovers MySQL Server application nodes and management nodes, as well as the MySQL Cluster data nodes.
Implementation.
MySQL Cluster uses three different types of nodes (processes) :
Generally, it is expected that each node will run on a separate physical host, VM or cloud instance (although it is very common to co-locate Management Nodes with MySQL Servers). For best practice, it is recommended not to co-locate nodes within the same node group on a single physical host (as that would represent a single point of failure).
Versions.
MySQL Cluster version numbers are no longer tied to that of MySQL Server - for example, the most recent version is MySQL Cluster 7.5 even though it is based on/contains the server component from MySQL 5.7.
Higher versions of MySQL Cluster include all of the features of lower versions, plus some new features.
Older versions (no longer in development):
Currently available versions:
Requirements.
For evaluation purposes, it is possible to run MySQL Cluster on a single physical server. For production deployments, the minimum system requirements are for 3 x instances / hosts:
or
Configurations as follows:
Tips and recommendations on deploying highly performant, production grade clusters can be found in the MySQL Cluster Evaluation Guide and the Guide to Optimizing Performance of the MySQL Cluster Database.
History.
MySQL AB acquired the technology behind MySQL Cluster from Alzato, a small venture company started by Ericsson. NDB was originally designed for the telecom market, with its high availability and high performance requirements.
MySQL Cluster based on the NDB storage engine has since been integrated into the MySQL product, with its first release being in MySQL 4.1.
Support.
MySQL Cluster is licensed under the GPLv2 license. Commercial support is available as part of MySQL Cluster CGE, which also includes non-open source addons such as MySQL Cluster Manager, MySQL Enterprise Monitor, in addition to MySQL Enterprise Security and MySQL Enterprise Audit.