Blog

Following the most recent releases of the Tungsten Cluster and Tungsten Replicator AMIs, we’ve recorded two getting started videos with some handy tips and tricks on how the AMIs work, how to avail of them … and how to get started with them!

This blog was written in response to a question about the differences between a 3-node MySQL cluster and a 2-node-plus-a-witness MySQL cluster for MySQL high availability (HA).

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 blog discusses Asynchronous versus Synchronous MySQL replication for MySQL clustering. Synchronous replication is viewed as the ‘holy grail’ of clustering. But unfortunately, when something is too good to be true, it often is. Before the Tungsten cluster solution Continuent built two synchronous replication cluster solutions (m/cluster, uni/cluster), but we abandoned those for good reasons.

Real-Time MySQL Analytics: In this first in a series of blog posts on real-time data replication from MySQL, MariaDB or Percona Server to high-performance data analytics engines (and how to do so easily and cost-effectively with the Tungsten Replicator AMI), we’re focussing on Vertica replication.

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.

Performing MySQL schema changes often requires downtime for applications. In this blog, we cover two ways we can perform MySQL schema changes without risking downtime or other MySQL data problems. In this real-life customer example, we perform a schema change to modify the column data type from varchar(20) to varchar(50) on approx. 35 tables from 3GB to 10GB in size. Two of the tables are partitioned, and one of them is about 100GB combining all partitions for that table.

Why do Continuent customers say year after year that Tungsten Clustering is a better MySQL HA/DR/Geo-Scale clustering and replication technology - in the cloud, on-prem, hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud - compared to alternatives such as Amazon Aurora for MySQL, Galera Cluster and host of others? We have put together a comprehensive comparison so you can learn about the pros and cons of various MySQL solutions for business-critical and mission-critical apps - and make an informed decision about what’s best for your needs and environment!

Read this blog to get a high-level introduction to AWS CloudFormation Templates, and a walkthrough on how to launch our CloudFormation template for the Tungsten Cluster AMI to run highly available MySQL database clusters in the AWS cloud.

What is the difference between MySQL replication and MySQL clustering? While clustering involves a layer of replication, the capabilities, benefits, and reasons for using clustering versus replication are very different. At Continuent, we offer both clustering and replication for your MySQL, MariaDB, and Percona MySQL - in the cloud, on-prem, hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud, with no application changes or downtime necessary.

“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!

Give the latest Tungsten Replicator (AMI) a test drive with its 14-day free trial on the AWS marketplace!