Clustered computing brings with it many benefits: high performance, high availability, scalable infrastructure, etc. But it also brings with it more complexity.

Why?

Well, by its very nature, there are more “moving parts” to monitor and manage (from physical, virtual and logical hosts) to clustering software to redundant networking components – the list goes on. And a cluster that isn’t effectively provisioned and managed will cause more downtime than the standalone systems it is designed to improve upon.

When it comes to the database industry, analysts already estimate that 50% of a typical database’s Total Cost of Ownership is attributable to staffing and downtime costs. These costs will only increase if a database cluster is not effectively monitored and managed.

Monitoring and management has been a major focus in the development of the MySQL Cluster database, and as part of this focus, the latest release of MySQL Cluster Manager (MCM) hit General Availability last week. You can read all about it in Andrew Morgan's blog.

MySQL Cluster Manager 1.1.1 makes it much simpler to get up and running, to manage the cluster and to allow multiple clusters to be managed from a single process.

MySQL Cluster Manager is part of the commercial Carrier-Grade Edition but anyone is free to download and use MySQL Cluster Manager without obligation for 30 days. This is a great way for those new to MySQL Cluster to rapidly configure and provision their first cluster.

All you need do is:

1. Go to Oracle eDelivery

2. Enter some basic details and click through the agreement

3. Select “MySQL Product Pack”, then your platform, then Go

Not only does MCM make the management of MySQL Cluster simpler, it also makes it safer. One of the largest causes of downtime is administrator error, and here MySQL Cluster Manager can significantly reduce risk.

Consider the task of upgrading rom one release of MySQL Cluster to another. This can be performed as an on-line operation, using rolling restarts to apply upgrades while still serving read and write requests. Its just one of the many operations users can perform on line (ie adding data nodes, upgrading schema, backups, etc) all of which enable MySQL Cluster to achieve 99.999% uptime.

Using a manual upgrade method on a cluster configured with 4 x data nodes, 2 x MySQL Server application nodes and 2 x management nodes, the administrator would be typing 46 x manual commands in an operation that would take around 2 ½ hours to complete. The steps are shown below:

• 1 x preliminary check of cluster state

• 8 x ssh commands per server

• 8 x per-process stop commands

• 4 x scp of configuration files (2 x mgmd & 2 x mysqld)

• 8 x per-process start commands

• 8 x checks for started and re-joined processes

• 8 x process completion verifications

• 1 x verify completion of the whole cluster.

Excludes manual editing of each configuration file.

Now compare this to using MySQL Cluster Manager:

• upgrade cluster --package=7.1 mycluster;

Just 1 command and walk away and leave it.

Note – both of the processes above exclude the preparation steps of copying the new software package to each host and defining where it's located. The total operation times are based on a DBA restarting 4 x MySQL Cluster Data Nodes, each with 6GB of data, and performing 10,000 operations per second.

You can learn more about MySQL Cluster Manager from our new whitepaper and on-line demo.

We also have an on-demand webinar which covers MySQL Cluster Manager as well as other complimentary methods to managing a MySQL Cluster environment:

* NDBINFO: released with MySQL Cluster 7.1, NDBINFO presents real-time status and usage statistics, providing developers and DBAs with a simple means of pro-actively monitoring and optimizing database performance and availability.

* MySQL Cluster Advisors & Graphs: part of the MySQL Enterprise Monitor and available in the commercial MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition, the Enterprise Advisor includes automated best practice rules that alert on key performance and availability metrics from MySQL Cluster data nodes.

While managing clusters will never be easy, it keeps getting a whole lot simpler !

Oracle investment in MySQL is growing, and so is our emphasis on community presence, participation, and leadership. We need now your help. Our team at Oracle needs to grow in order to support community better, and we are starting by filling the position for MySQL community manager in a place with a significantly large MySQL user base: North America.

Here we are again, with a fresh recruitment offer, for a MySQL Community Manager for North America. Please visit this link for the full req.

In the meantime, here is, in short, what we are looking for: We need a passionate MySQL lover, with a strong technical experience, and a recognized ability to get along with physical and virtual crowds. We also need someone who can speak in public confidently and has no objections to travel locally and abroad.

The job of a community manager is a powerful blend of a geek, a social media wizard, and a public speaker. I put the geek personality first, because leading by example is an important feature of this job.

If you want to apply, be aware that you will have fierce competition and we will subject you to tough scrutiny. If that doesn't scare you, Please go ahead and apply!

Good luck!

The inclusion of Hudson is a bit of an opportunistic move (more on that in a bit), the rest comprises a well tested, integrated, optimized, and extended component stack for your new and old Web Apps.

The WebStack can be downloaded here; the bundle includes the WebStack Enterprise Manager, which, unlike the other components, is not free right-to-use but rather is available with an eval license; this is a model like that of the GlassFish Enterprise Manager. The current release supports RHEL, Solaris and OpenSolaris (it is bundled in OpenSolaris); for additional details, check out the Documentation and Discussion Forum.

Check out these posts from the WebStack team: • CVR's Announcement and Overview. • CVR's note on two key properties: Fully Relocatable, and Updatable. • Sriram on Installing AMP stack within GlassFish Web Stack 1.5. • Irfan on the Enterprise Manager's Navigation Panel. • Jeff on Installing via IPS tools.