I'm setting up a test environment for my work, involving four Red Hat ES 4 machines and MySQL 5.0 Cluster. We want to test out the reliability and failover feature of Cluster to see if it will fit our needs and our particular environment. In any case, I wanted to know if there are any common pitfalls that I should know about, anything people have found to be a gotcha about setting up the clustered database environment.

I'm fairly experienced with Linux, I've got about a year's worth of practical experience under my belt. The real issue here, though, is that I have absolutely zero experience with MySQL. Up until this point, I've worked mainly with Microsoft SQL Server, (hence the reason I got put on this project: I know SQL and I have experience with database servers, in general). I've never really worked in a clustered environment before, let alone one using MySQL.

So far, I've read through the online documentation, I've done a couple of barebone-installs of the stand-alone MySQL server, and I've reviewed the procedures for installing the clustered environment. I've got the -max packages downloaded to each machine's /var/tmp/ directory, and I'm just now at the stage where I can begin installing the storage nodes, the MySQL node, and the management nodes. So, before I get too deep into it, are there any MySQL veterans out there that know of any pitfalls to watch out for, anything that may not be well-defined in the documentation?

I don't know how much you know about MySQL website, but just in case, here are some useful links:

The cluster docs:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...l-cluster.html

Migration Issues forum; MS-SQL
http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?60

Cluster forum:
http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?25

The latter sounds like it would be worth scanning for you.

The major thing I discovered when we built ours is that 5.0 (the only prod ver so far), is entirely run in RAM, ie it's not disk based like all the others I'ved used eg Oracle, Sybase (& MS ?).
I believe 5.1 will be.
BTW, 5.1 is avail for download as a beta.
You might want to check-out the release dates in case they match your schedule.

Good luck

Yup, I've got most of the documentation about the cluster from the MySQL website printed out by now. It's all been extremely helpful and very informative as to setting things up and getting me off the ground. I remmeber reading that the cluster is memory-based, and that they'd be moving to disk-based at some point in the future. The forum is very helpful, as well, a lot of my questions have been answered there. The trouble is that I couldn't get much insight from the users there, aside from being pointed off to the documentation. I think I was just looking more for someone with experience with setting up the cluster, and anything they learned by trial and error, that they felt would be worth knowing.

Thank you for the links, though, they were very helpful.