Data is the currency of today’s web, mobile, social, enterprise and cloud applications. Ensuring data is always available is a top priority for any organization – minutes of downtime will result in significant loss of revenue and reputation.

There is not a “one size fits all” approach to delivering High Availability (HA). Unique application attributes, business requirements, operational capabilities and legacy infrastructure can all influence HA technology selection. And then technology is only one element in delivering HA – “People and Processes” are just as critical as the technology itself.

For this reason, MySQL Enterprise Edition is available supporting a range of HA solutions, fully certified and supported by Oracle. MySQL Enterprise HA is not some expensive add-on, but included within the core Enterprise Edition offering, along with the management tools, consulting and 24x7 support needed to deliver true HA.

At the recent MySQL Connect conference, we announced new HA options for MySQL users running on both Linux and Solaris:

- DRBD for MySQL

- Oracle Solaris Clustering for MySQL

DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device) is an open source Linux kernel module which leverages synchronous replication to deliver high availability database applications across local storage. DRBD synchronizes database changes by mirroring data from an active node to a standby node and supports automatic failover and recovery. Linux, DRBD, Corosync and Pacemaker, provide an integrated stack of mature and proven open source technologies.

DRBD Stack: Providing Synchronous Replication for the MySQL Database with InnoDB

Download the DRBD for MySQL whitepaper to learn more, including step-by-step instructions to install, configure and provision DRBD with MySQL

Oracle Solaris Cluster provides high availability and load balancing to mission-critical applications and services in physical or virtualized environments. With Oracle Solaris Cluster, organizations have a scalable and flexible solution that is suited equally to small clusters in local datacenters or larger multi-site, multi-cluster deployments that are part of enterprise disaster recovery implementations. The Oracle Solaris Cluster MySQL agent integrates seamlessly with MySQL offering a selection of configuration options in the various Oracle Solaris Cluster topologies.

Putting it All Together

When you add MySQL Replication and MySQL Cluster into the HA mix, along with 3rd party solutions, users have extensive choice (and decisions to make) to deliver HA services built on MySQL

To make the decision process simpler, we have also published a new MySQL HA Solutions Guide.

Exploring beyond just the technology, the guide presents a methodology to select the best HA solution for your new web, cloud and mobile services, while also discussing the importance of people and process in ensuring service continuity.

This is subject recently presented at Oracle Open World, and the slides are available here.

Whatever your uptime requirements, you can be sure MySQL has an HA solution for your needs

Please don't hesitate to let us know of your HA requirements in the comments section of this blog. You can also contact MySQL consulting to learn more about their HA Jumpstart offering which will help you scope out your scaling and HA requirements.