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This is the second blog in our ‘High Noon’ comparison series in which we look at the main solutions for MySQL high availability, disaster recovery and geographic distribution. Here we focus on highly available, geo-scale, multi-region MySQL for mission-critical sites and apps with Codership’s Galera and its variants (MariaDB Galera and Percona XtraDB Cluster) as compared to MySQL clusters with Continuent Tungsten, the only complete, fully-integrated solution for highly-available MySQL clustering solution - for any version of MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona Server - on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud.

This is the first blog in our ‘High Noon’ comparison series in which we look at the alternative solutions for MySQL high availability, disaster recovery and geographic-distribution. We focus on highly available, geo-scale, multi-region MySQL for business critical applications as directly compared to Amazon Aurora. Tungsten Clustering makes it easy to deploy and manage highly available MySQL clusters with any version of MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona Server for MySQL on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud.

“We don’t take backups, we use replication instead.” If you happen to agree with this statement, I urge you to continue reading. But even if you think you have a good backup plan, I still urge you to continue reading. Taking backups is usually not one of the most exciting parts of the job, but it might be the part that saves your company from a catastrophe. So, let’s make a plan!

We’ve been receiving requests recently from MySQL users wanting to understand how InnoDB Cluster compares to Tungsten Clustering, our MySQL HA, disaster recovery, and geo-clustering solution. In response we have come up with this comparative outline, looking at some of the key features of each.

Real time database replication is a must for clustering and other key business purposes, like reporting. There are a number of replication technologies available for MySQL, and some are even bundled into various solutions. When choosing a replication methodology, it is paramount to understand just how the data moves from source to target. In this blog post, we will examine how asynchronous, synchronous, and "semi-synchronous" replication behave when used for clustering. Also, we will explore how replication affects database performance and data availability.

Performing schema changes often requires extended downtime for applications. This is due to MySQL needing to rebuild tables for common schema change operations. Tools like pt-online-schema-change have been written to try to overcome the downtime associated with schema changes, however they are complex and put a high load on the database.

When deploying Tungsten Clustering for MySQL / MariaDB / Percona Server, we always recommend an odd number of Manager nodes in each cluster. Let's take a look at how having an odd number of Managers helps keep a Tungsten Cluster functioning and avoids data corruption scenarios (i.e. "split brain").

Enterprises require high availability for their business-critical applications. Even the smallest unplanned outage or even a planned maintenance operation can cause lost sales, productivity, and erode customer confidence. Additionally, updating and retrieving data needs to be robust to keep up with user demand.