I'm running MySQL servers load balanced via HAProxy. But I need to perform some action whenever a node (MySQL) goes down or comes up, like we do in PgPool-II.
Example:
When ever MySQL-1 goes down, I also want to shutdown my WebServer-1. (STONITH like)
In PgPool-II for PostgreSQL, I can do this. I'm unaware, if there are similar tools for MySQL.
Is this possible in HAProxy itself:
Say, when my DB-1 goes down, route the web server traffic, to WebServer-2.
MySQL has quite an extensive support for replication, high availability and sharding. Your question is not very clear to me but here are a few things you could try reading:
For failover, MySQL provides a python script called mysqlfailover which is shipped as part of MySQL utilities.
For sharding and high availability you could try out MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric is a relatively new product so expect it to not provide all kinds of fancy sophisticated sharding schemes in theory but it is stable enough for you to trust it with what it provides.
By the way both of them are open source so you could tweak it to suit your need!
Related
My MYSQL servers are not configured properly with failover. I am thinking of using Redhat cluster or heartbeat. Also, I need to achieve all tasks w/ one floating IP since application does not know about multiple databases. Can someone suggest what route would be the very for best?
If you decide on using regular replication I would recommend you using this:
MHA tool for MySQL replication high availability
I didn't have a good experience with the ways you want to use, they are not as good as a cluster and not so much better than normal replication with the tool I posted. I do believe you should take a look at this tool and maybe stick with regular replication or jump to serious HA with MySQL cluster. Configuring the cluster might be hard but using Several Nines Solutions things might be a bit easier.
We are currently evaluating failover support in different databases.
We were earlier using HSQLDB but it seems that it does not have clustering/replication support.
Our requirement is simply to have two database servers, one being only for synchronous backup but if the primary server is down, then the secondary should automatically start acting as the primary server.
Has anyone evaluated MySQL, PostgreSQL or any other DB server for such a use case?
Edit: We had thought of using MySQL cluster but it now seems that it is under GPL license which we won't be able to work with. Could anyone please suggest a synchronous replication/clustering solution which can be used? We are currently using HSQL, so a solution with HSQL used in clustered mode will be ideal for us but we are open for change.
Stackoverflow resources
MySQL supports replication out of the box: see this question for MySQL: Scaling solutions for MySQL (Replication, Clustering)
PostgreSQL also support replication, see this question for that: PostgreSQL replication strategies
If your requirements are simple MySQL will work
I've used MySQL is a simple master-master failover scenario using the setup I read in High Performance MySQL. I highly recommend the book if you're keen on using MySQL.
It has worked well for me, because I just wanted a simple fail-over.
If your use case is just as simple. It will work well.
Just for completeness, the H2 database has some clustering support, but compared to the MySQL and PostgreSQL features it is very limited, it's really only failover. I would first look at HA-JDBC.
for a simple failover where servers are on the same location. you can use DRBD and Heartbeat.
In a nutshell: DRBD stores the data on 2 servers on the same time. fully transparent to the system. with heartbeat the standby checks against the main server, if its not reachable, it takes over the resource, mounts it and starts the database daemon. (works with mysql, postgres and most probably with most other daemons out there)
There is a third-party product that works with HSQLDB:
http://ha-jdbc.sourceforge.net/
Not sure this is within the desired price range of most FOSS-type people :-) but we use DB2 9.7 for exactly this purpose (actually, we mostly use DB2/z on the mainframe for it, but some customers like the DB2/LUW (Linux/UNIX/Windows) option for smaller systems).
DB2 comes with high availability (HA) features built in and you can use db2haicu, the DB2 High Availability Instance Configuration Utility (gotta love those acronym generators employed by Big Blue) to configure things relatively painlessly.
It's active/passive as you desired, although DB2 is certainly capable of active/active setups for load balancing.
The particular setups we're most familiar with at the low end (everything other than a mainframe) are actually shared disk ones, with the HA applying to only DBMS resources and not data, but you can separate the data with DB2 replication features as well.
We've had one client (at least) using Q replication, which is a very low latency replication method, close to synchronous but not quite. DB2 does actually provide real synchronous replication as well.
DeveloperWorks has an interesting article on how this all hangs together, along with the various options.
We currently have an application located on a remote server, and our call center uses this application to perform customer transactions.
We plan to setup asterisk on a local server to help us with all the call routing and recording, for asterisk to work smoothly we have to move our application from the remote server to the local.
Its will be easy to mover all data to the local server and do transactions locally, but there is an option for users to do transactions online too which will hit the remote server database.
The reason we still have the remote application because of the reliable infrastructure and backup solution provided by rackspace.
If we move application to local server i am looking at a reliable solution for syncing remote and local databases so that we can handle local as well as online transactions.
Why not use mysql master-master replication and hold definitive data at both ends? (Note you'll have to do some reading on on auto_increment_increment and auto_increment_offset)
symcbean's answer is basically correct. I'd add this article as a good starting place to understand master-master replication. I'd further recommend High Performance MySQL as a good reference for a deeper understanding of the techniques and issues.
There are some issues that you will have to face doing writes to two non-colocated MySQL servers. You'll have replication lag to deal with, so the databases won't necessarily be completely in sync, but will only be "eventually consistent". Also, if you have both sides doing updates on content, you can end up with data integrity issues. If your system leans towards INSERTs more then UPDATES for the write operations, it is less likely that you'll run into issues. Also, if the subset of data that is likely to be modified tends to be localized around one or the other of the servers, you'll run into fewer issues.
Otherwise, you'll probably want to roll your own solution that is designed towards the specific use cases of your application.
I'm working on a SaaS project and mysql is our main database. Our applications is written on c# .net and runs under an windows 2003 server.
Considering maintainance, cost, options and performance, which server plattaform can I decide for MySQL hosting, windows or Unix/Linux/Ubuntu/Debian?
The scenario is as following:
The server I run today has a modarate transaction volume. Databases increase 5MB daily and we expect to increase 50MB in couple of months and it is mission critical.
I don't know how big the database is going to be. We rent a VPS to host application and database server.
Most of our queries are simple but our ORM Tool makes constantly use of subqueries. Also we run reports simple and heavy ones. Some them runs after user click, but most runs in order to the queue.
Buy an extra co-lo space will be nice as we got more clients. That's SaaS project after all.
When developing, you can use your Windows box to also run a MySQL server. If and when you
want to have your DBMS in a separate server it can be in either a Windows or Linux server.
MySql and supporting tools for backup etc probably have more choices in Linux.
There are also 3rd party suppliers who will host your MySQL database on their servers. The benefit is they will handle backups, maintenance etc.
Also: look into phpMyAdmin for use as a great admin tool.
Larry
I think you need more information to make an informed decision. It's hard to just pull out a "best" answer based on no specific information.
What is your expected transaction volume?
How big will the database get?
How complex are your queries, ie are they long running or relatively quick?
Are you hosting the application on your own server at your own location? If you have to buy extra co-lo space maybe an extra server isn't the best option.
How "mission critical" is this database? Ie maybe you need replicated servers to ensure stability.
There is a server sizing tool online at http://www.sizinglounge.com/, so you should check that out. It sounds like your server could be smaller than their smallest tier, but it should be a good place to start.
If this is a mission critical application you need to do some kind of replication to an extra server in case the primary one fails, so you are definitely looking at two systems. This has to be in addition to a good backup plan.
Given that you are uncertain about how big it could get you might just continue renting a server. For your backup one idea would be to look at running MySQL on an Amazon EC2 instance. BTW it is important to have a remote replicated server. If you have two systems next to each other and an environmental problem comes up, they could both be out of commission at the same time. But with a remote copy your options are open to potentially working around it.
If you run a lot of read-only queries locally and have your site hosted somewhere, it might make sense to set up a local replicated database copy to query against. That could potentially improve both your website and local performance quite a bit. Plus it would give you some good piece of mind having a local copy under your control.
HTH,
Brandon
I have a fairly good feel for what MySQL replication can do. I'm wondering what other databases support replication, and how they compare to MySQL and others?
Some questions I would have are:
Is replication built in, or an add-on/plugin?
How does the replication work (high-level)? MySQL provides statement-based replication (and row-based replication in 5.1). I'm interested in how other databases compare. What gets shipped over the wire? How do changes get applied to the replicas?
Is it easy to check consistency between master and slaves?
How easy is it to get a failed replica back in sync with the master?
Performance? One thing I hate about MySQL replication is that it's single-threaded, and replicas often have trouble keeping up, since the master can be running many updates in parallel, but the replicas have to run them serially. Are there any gotchas like this in other databases?
Any other interesting features...
MySQL's replication is weak inasmuch as one needs to sacrifice other functionality to get full master/master support (due to the restriction on supported backends).
PostgreSQL's replication is weak inasmuch as only master/standby is supported built-in (using log shipping); more powerful solutions (such as Slony or Londiste) require add-on functionality. Archive log segments are shipped over the wire, which are the same records used to make sure that a standalone database is in working, consistent state on unclean startup. This is what I'm using presently, and we have resynchronization (and setup, and other functionality) fully automated. None of these approaches are fully synchronous. More complete support will be built in as of PostgreSQL 8.5. Log shipping does not allow databases to come out of synchronization, so there is no need for processes to test the synchronized status; bringing the two databases back into sync involves setting the backup flag on the master, rsyncing to the slave (with the database still runnning; this is safe), and unsetting the backup flag (and restarting the slave process) with the archive logs generated during the backup process available; my shop has this process (like all other administration tasks) automated. Performance is a nonissue, since the master has to replay the log segments internally anyhow in addition to doing other work; thus, the slaves will always be under less load than the master.
Oracle's RAC (which isn't properly replication, as there's only one storage backend -- but you have multiple frontends sharing the load, and can build redundancy into that shared storage backend itself, so it's worthy of mention here) is a multi-master approach far more comprehensive than other solutions, but is extremely expensive. Database contents aren't "shipped over the wire"; instead, they're stored to the shared backend, which all the systems involved can access. Because there is only one backend, the systems cannot come out of sync.
Continuent offers a third-party solution which does fully synchronous statement-level replication with support for all three of the above databases; however, the commercially supported version of their product isn't particularly cheap (though vastly less expensive. Last time I administered it, Continuent's solution required manual intervention for bringing a cluster back into sync.
I have some experience with MS-SQL 2005 (publisher) and SQLEXPRESS (subscribers) with overseas merge replication. Here are my comments:
1 - Is replication built in, or an add-on/plugin?
Built in
2 - How does the replication work
(high-level)?
Different ways to replicate, from snapshot (giving static data at the subscriber level) to transactional replication (each INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE instruction is executed on all servers). Merge replication replicate only final changes (successives UPDATES on the same record will be made at once during replication).
3 - Is it easy to check consistency between master and slaves?
Something I have never done ...
4 - How easy is it to get a failed replica back in sync with the master?
The basic resynch process is just a double-click one .... But if you have 4Go of data to reinitialize over a 64 Kb connection, it will be a long process unless you customize it.
5 - Performance?
Well ... You will of course have a bottleneck somewhere, being your connection performance, volume of data, or finally your server performance. In my configuration, users only write to subscribers, which all replicate with the main database = publisher. This server is then never sollicited by final users, and its CPU is strictly dedicated to data replication (to multiple servers) and backup. Subscribers are dedicated to clients and one replication (to publisher), which gives a very interesting result in terms of data availability for final users. Replications between publisher and subscribers can be launched together.
6 - Any other interesting features...
It is possible, with some anticipation, to keep on developping the database without even stopping the replication process....tables (in an indirect way), fields and rules can be added and replicated to your subscribers.
Configurations with a main publisher and multiple suscribers can be VERY cheap (when compared to some others...), as you can use the free SQLEXPRESS on the suscriber's side, even when running merge or transactional replications
Try Sybase SQL Anywhere
Just adding to the options with SQL Server (especially SQL 2008, which has Change Tracking features now). Something to consider is the Sync Framework from Microsoft. There's a few options there, from the basic hub-and-spoke architecture which is great if you have a single central server and sometimes-connected clients, right through to peer-to-peer sync which gives you the ability to do much more advanced syncing with multiple 'master' databases.
The reason you might want to consider this instead of traditional replication is that you have a lot more control from code, for example you can get events during the sync progress for Update/Update, Update/Delete, Delete/Update, Insert/Insert conflicts and decide how to resolve them based on business logic, and if needed store the loser of the conflict's data somewhere for manual or automatic processing. Have a look at this guide to help you decide what's possible with the different methods of replication and/or sync.
For the keen programmers the Sync Framework is open enough that you can have the clients connect via WCF to your WCF Service which can abstract any back-end data store (I hear some people are experimenting using Oracle as the back-end).
My team has just gone release with a large project that involves multiple SQL Express databases syncing sub-sets of data from a central SQL Server database via WAN and Internet (slow dial-up connection in some cases) with great success.
MS SQL 2005 Standard Edition and above have excellent replication capabilities and tools. Take a look at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151198(SQL.90).aspx
It's pretty capable. You can even use SQL Server Express as a readonly subscriber.
There are a lot of different things which databases CALL replication. Not all of them actually involve replication, and those which do work in vastly different ways. Some databases support several different types.
MySQL supports asynchronous replication, which is very good for some things. However, there are weaknesses. Statement-based replication is not the same as what most (any?) other databases do, and doesn't always result in the expected behaviour. Row-based replication is only supported by a non production-ready version (but is more consistent with how other databases do it).
Each database has its own take on replication, some involve other tools plugging in.
A bit off-topic but you might want to check Maatkit for tools to help with MySQL replication.
All the main commercial databases have decent replication - but some are more decent than others. IBM Informix Dynamic Server (version 11 and later) is particularly good. It actually has two systems - one for high availability (HDR - high-availability data replication) and the other for distributing data (ER - enterprise replication). And the the Mach 11 features (RSS - remote standalone secondary, and SDS - shared disk secondary) are excellent too, doubly so in 11.50 where you can write to either the primary or secondary of an HDR pair.
(Full disclosure: I work on Informix softare.)
I haven't tried it myself, but you might also want to look into OpenBaseSQL, which seems to have some simple to use replication built-in.
Another way to go is to run in a virtualized environment. I thought the data in this blog article was interesting
http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/09/enterprise-apps.html
It's from an EMC executive, so obviously, it's not independent, but the experiment should be reproducible
Here's the data specific for Oracle
http://oraclestorageguy.typepad.com/oraclestorageguy/2008/09/to-rac-or-not-to-rac-reprise.html
Edit: If you run virtualized, then there are ways to make anything replicate
http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/05/vmwares-srm-cha.html