MySQL High Availability

Chapter 2. MySQL Replication Fundamentals

Joel jumped as a sharp rap on his door announced his boss’s unapologetic interruption. Before Joel could say “Come in,” the boss stepped into his doorway and said, “Joel, we’re getting complaints that our response time is getting slow. See what you can do to speed things up. The administrator told me there are too many read operations from the applications. See what you can do to offload some of that.”

Before Joel could respond, Mr. Summerson was out the door and on his way elsewhere. “I suppose he means we need a bigger server,” Joel thought.

As if he had read Joel’s mind, Mr. Summerson stuck his head back in the doorway and said, “Oh, and by the way, the startup we bought all the equipment from had a bunch of servers we haven’t found any use for yet; can you take a look at those and see what you can do with them? OK, Joel?” Then he was gone again.

“I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this,” Joel thought as he pulled his favorite MySQL book off the shelf and glanced at the table of contents. He found the chapter on replication and decided that might fit the bill.

MySQL replication is a very useful tool when used correctly, but it can also be a source of considerable headaches when it experiences a failure or when it is configured or used incorrectly. This chapter will cover the fundamentals of using MySQL replication by beginning with a simple setup to get you started and then introducing some basic techniques to store in your “replication toolkit.” ...