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Controlled failover simplicity with MySQL

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As part of a recent engagement, I described the relative products to manage a MySQL pair (i.e. an Active/Passive MySQL masters configuration). This included the steps to undertake a controlled failover for supporting software maintenance using manual procedures. The upcoming Effective MySQL: Replication Techniques in Depth book details each step and all conditions to review over a dozen pages. While the steps are straightforward and generally well known, scripting this for your environment takes a certain amount of work to ensure your information is correct, and application connectivity loss is kept to a minimum.

In Continuent Tungsten (which I have just been reviewing these past few weeks), I achieved the same result with a single command.

$ echo "switch" | /opt/continuent/tungsten/tungsten-manager/bin/cctrl

In addition to all the checks and balances to ensure data is consistent and no information can be lost, Continuent Tungsten Connectors ensure ALL database connections are maintained, i.e. they are not dropped. This is ideal for an application that uses persistent connections, e.g. Java applications. This is a feature that other options do not provide. This command also supports additional read slaves with no additional work.

This post has been in draft for a while, the current chatter on disasters, controlled and uncontrolled failover, and the disaster preparedness for your company information is a very important. There are several options for implementing a more highly available (HA) MySQL solution depending on your business continuity requirements.

The fine print

Here is the full output of the command, between 3 servers, alpha, beta and gamma.

$ echo "switch" | /opt/continuent/tungsten/tungsten-manager/bin/cctrl
Tungsten Enterprise 1.5.2 build 69
connect to 'nyc@alpha'
nyc: session established
[LOGICAL] /nyc > switch
SELECTED SLAVE: beta@nyc
PURGE REMAINING ACTIVE SESSIONS ON CURRENT MASTER 'alpha@nyc'
PURGED A TOTAL OF 0 ACTIVE SESSIONS ON MASTER 'alpha@nyc'
FLUSH TRANSACTIONS ON CURRENT MASTER 'alpha@nyc'
PUT THE NEW MASTER 'beta@nyc' ONLINE
PUT THE PRIOR MASTER 'alpha@nyc' ONLINE AS A SLAVE
RECONFIGURING SLAVE 'gamma@nyc' TO POINT TO NEW MASTER 'beta@nyc'
SWITCH TO 'beta@nyc' WAS SUCCESSFUL
[LOGICAL] /nyc >
Exiting...

Joining the Continuent Team

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This month I have joined the team at Continuent. No stranger to the MySQL ecosystem, Continuent provides replication and clustering technology for managing data between MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Vertica and a growing list of data stores.

I have known many of the team at Continuent for some time, and will again be joining Giuseppe Maxia from our days at MySQL Inc/AB starting back in 2006.

I am looking forward to taking the hard work out of administration of MySQL systems with the simplicity of Continuent Tungsten, simplifying tasks including automatic failover, multi-master and geo cluster redundancy to a single command.

Catch me speaking at the upcoming MySQL Connect (San Francisco) and Percona Live (New York) conferences, and where the third book of the Effective MySQL Series Replication Techniques in Depth will also be available for sale.