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Setting up a MySQL Cluster for your Linux desktop

By Mark Nielsen

  1. Introduction
  2. Row Level Replication and why it frustrates me
  3. Misc Setup
  4. General Approach
  5. Configuration Files
  6. Installing MySQL Cluster on Ubuntu
  7. Setting up and Testing Replication to a Slave and Cluster Slave
  8. Let's test MySQL
  9. Installing Stored procedure on Slaves and Masters
  10. Conclusion and Future Topics
  11. Some SSD preliminary testing

Introduction

MySQL Cluster has come a long way in the 4 years since I experimented with it. Compared to when I first got the cluster working on my home computer, I didn't have to change much get the latest version up and running.

So, what is MySQL Cluster? It is a database solution which tries to solve high availability issues by using multiple synchronous masters (for the lack of a better phrase) in a shared-nothing environment. In order to solve a lot of the latency issues associated with multiple masters, it keeps all the indexed data in memory to enable fast processing of the data.

So then what is the purpose of this article? To let you setup a MySQL Cluster for fun, on a single box, so you can test out its features1. The main things I wanted to test out are:

There is also one important item to keep in mind about MySQL Cluster. I have no idea why they make "MySQL Cluster" as a separate product from the main MySQL server. In the past, the "MySQL Cluster" was just the NDB engine running in MySQL. It seems to be the same way even now and I suspect that it might just be due to politics and marketing that they have something called a "MySQL Cluster" when it is really just MySQL with the NDB engine. The mysqld server running in "MySQL Cluster" can still store data in InnoDB and MyISAM formats.

For more info about MySQL Cluster, refer to:

The MySQL Cluster uses these types of servers:
  1. Data Node: Where all the data is stored.
  2. MySQL frontend server: The MySQL frontend doesn't store any data itself (unless you really want it to, like I do). It handles the processing of the queries and gets the data from the data nodes.
  3. Management Node: Manages all the nodes.
I highly recommend that you view the limitations of MySQL Cluster. If you are used to using InnoDB, you will need to change some practices.

Row Level Replication and why it frustrates me

Please read Comparison of Statement-Based and Row-Based Replication.

MySQL copies data from one computer to another computer through MySQL Replication. The old way of replicating data was to copy over and execute all the SQL commands from one MySQL server to the other MySQL servers. This type of replication was called "Statement Level Replication.". This copying and executing of queries was NOT real-time and had some issues. Basically, it was like this:

For most practical purposes, most small queries finish very fast and replication is also very fast.

So what is Row level Replication? Basically, the SQL query which executes the changes on the master is forgotten and we only record the actual row differences and copy them over. For example, let us say that a query updates a table and sets the country code to 'US' for all entries that are NULL. In a table with 1 million rows, let's say only 10 rows were NULL and thus 10 rows get updated. The difference between Statement and Row Level Replication is the following:

Row Level Replication doesn't care what the SQL query was. It only looks at the data that has changed and copies those changes to the slaves.

Why does this frustrate me? For a few reasons:

  1. Everything is moving towards Row Level Replication and Statement Level Replication is being made incompatible under some conditions. I think both are very powerful and you should let the end user decide what they want to use. I understand that Statement Level Replication can cause problems (under some circumstances), so my attitude is that they should work around the problems. The power retained by keeping both as an option at all times is the ability to customize how you do things. I have been in many situations where a slight improvement in performance meant a big deal. Thus, you want all your options open.
  2. Also, Row Level Replication is MUCH HARDER to debug. Statement Level Replication is very easy to debug. I have seen weird replication issues with MySQL in the past and I don't like to be in a situation where I can't debug things easily. Everything about being a DBA is debugging database problems and finding out where the problem is. All the advantages of Row Level Replication are almost irrelevant if you can't debug issues in replication.

I am glad we have Row Level Replication as an option and it can be nice to use depending on your needs. I just wish Statement Level Replication could be used if handled correctly under all all configurations. To give you a better perspective of why Statement Level Replication is nice to debug, we had a weird case one time where 1 byte in a replication stream would change for no reason over a WAN. If it changed in the data, nobody would notice (that's really bad). But if it changed in one of the SQL words, replication would break. We were easily able to compare the master's binlogs to the slave's binlogs and find out what the problem was. I remain sceptical how easy it will be to verify why things break with row level replication. Maybe I am just paranoid, but you have to be when managing databases.


Misc Setup

I have two systems I am using to test MySQL Cluster on. Some things to NOTE: And also, add these IP addresses to your system:
/sbin/ifconfig lo:1 127.0.0.101 netmask 255.0.0.0
/sbin/ifconfig lo:2 127.0.0.102 netmask 255.0.0.0
/sbin/ifconfig lo:3 127.0.0.103 netmask 255.0.0.0
/sbin/ifconfig lo:4 127.0.0.104 netmask 255.0.0.0

As a side note, it is interesting to see how Ubuntu is taking off on the desktop market and how it is starting to creep into the server market. For me, I just like to use the same operating system for the desktops and servers because then I know that the operating system is flexible and can work under multiple environments. After all, isn't a desktop just a server running Xwindows with OpenOffice and FireFox? To me, the words "desktop" and "server" are just marketing terms.


General Approach

The goal of setting up a MySQL Cluster is to make sure that if any node goes down, a backup node can take over. This is true for all the nodes including the management node. What is the minimum number of servers you need for a redundant MySQL Cluster? Two. People often claim that the management node needs its own server, which is totally BOGUS. You can have backup management nodes. Also, a management node doesn't do anything most of the time, so if you use a separate server for the management node, it is a waste.

Here's the setup for our article:

  1. Add 4 IP addresses to your box: 127.0.0.101, 127.0.0.102, 127.0.0.103, 127.0.0.104. This can be accomplished through standard linux networking commands.
  2. For each IP address, bind a data node, mysqld node, and management node to its default ports. Each IP address will have its own set of nodes.
  3. One management node will be a backup management node.
  4. Define NDB databases with a prefix to make it easy to separate NDB databases from InnoDB and MyISAM databases.
  5. Setup replication between the MySQL servers on 127.0.0.101 and 127.0.0.102 in dual master mode excluding replication of the NDB databases (the cluster takes care of the NDB databases).
  6. Setup replication to a cluster slave and a normal slave using Row Level Replication. You could do Statement Level Replication, but then all writes would have to go to exactly one of the mysqld servers in the Cluster.
  Replication Type Row Level
Replication
Special
Rep Config
Hacks
necessary
Problems Notes Weird Purpose
  Cluster Other
Engines
MySQLD
Master
Replication
Slave Cluster
Slave
 
1.                 Basic configuration.
2.             1 Non-ndb data is split across mysqld nodes 1
3.     Y Y Y 2 Can use other storage engines. 1
5.   Y Y Y 2 Convert tables to non-NDB tables on Slave. 1,2
6.       Y       Standard Cluster Replication.
7.   Y Y Y 2 Cluster Replication with non-NDB tables. 1
8. Y Y Y 2 Convert replication to non-NDB tables on Slave. 1,2

Problems:

  1. Inconsistent data on non-NDB tables.
  2. Replication configurations are needed to avoid duplicate entries in the binlogs. Non-NDB data replicated on the MySQLd servers will need to be setup in a Replication Circle.

Weird Purposes:

  1. Keep log data out of cluster to keep the data small in the cluster.
  2. Use Read-Repeatable mode in InnoDB on the normal slave. This can be useful for *snapshot* reports.

Configuration Files

Place all of these files in "/etc/mysql". I make NO APOLOGIES for the configuration of these files. I haven't finished tuning the configurations yet. I just did the bare minimum to get it to work. Use at your own risk.

These files I use to stop and start MySQL. I put it in /usr/local/mysql_cluster.


Installing MySQL Cluster on Ubuntu

Compile and install OR download.

There are 3 ways to install MySQL: Do-It-Yourself, get it from a 3rd party, or from MySQL. It is unlikely that the official website for MySQL will have consistent downloads for Ubuntu versions. We'll see if things change in the future. You have two real options: Download and compile it yourself or download from a third party. I'll explain both here:

Download and Install MySQL

Download my config files and untar them.
tar -zxvf cfiles.tgz
It should be safe to download and untar them in the working source directory of MySQL right after you have downloaded and untarred the source code for MySQL.

Note: The download steps below only work for a specific version of MySQL. Please refer to http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/cluster/ for newer versions.

Use my install script to install MySQL. You can read the various comments in the script. Please read the comments before you execute each section in the script. In general, it will attempt to setup three things:

  1. A MySQL Cluster
  2. A regular slave
  3. A MySQL cluster slave
No replication will be setup however. This install script downloads, compiles, and sets up the basic environment. To execute this script:

Setting up and Testing Replication to a Slave and Cluster Slave

We assume the MySQL cluster and the slaves are running. Replication is not setup yet, but it will be. Now we will setup replication where each of the two MySQL nodes will replicate non-NDB tables to each other. Also, we will setup replication from the first MySQL node to a MySQL slave and the 2nd MySQL node to the cluster slave. The important thing to note is that the slaves will replicate all the data from all databases.

NOTE: We only use Row Level Replication. It is possible to do this with Statement Level Replication, but it gets more complicated.

Look at my slave setup script.


Let's test MySQL

./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create database if not exists ndb"
./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show databases" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create database if not exists ndb"
./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists ndb.ndb1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists ndb.ndb1 (i int) engine=ndb;" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists rep.rep1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;"
./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into ndb.ndb1 values (1);" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into rep.rep1 values (1);"
# These tables should contain one row each. ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from ndb.ndb1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from rep.rep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from ndb.ndb1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from rep.rep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from ndb.ndb1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from rep.rep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from ndb.ndb1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from rep.rep1"
# Test replication for the non-replicating database. ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists norep.norep1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists norep.norep1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists norep.norep1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "create table if not exists norep.norep1 (i int) engine=InnoDB;"
./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into norep.norep1 values (1);" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into norep.norep1 values (2);" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into norep.norep1 values (3);" ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "insert into norep.norep1 values (4);"
# These tables should contain one unique value. ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from norep.norep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from norep.norep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from norep.norep1" ./bin/mysql -N -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "select * from norep.norep1"
You should see one line of data in both tables on the slave.

Installing Stored procedure on Slave

When a MySQLd server using NDB restarts, it sends out an error message. It is not usually a good idea to restart replication without knowing what is going on and checking the logs. However, there may be times when you don't care. For that case, I have created a stored procedure using an event to kick off replication when a known error occurs. This stored procedure only works for the first 5 days. If you wish, you can modify it for a longer period of time.

Let's kill replication, install the stored procedure, and then see if it fixes replication.

  1. Download this file: files/stored_procedure_rep.sp
  2. if [ -e "instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysqld.pid" ]; then
     k=`cat instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysqld.pid`
     echo "Killing $k"
     kill $k
    fi
    if [ -e "instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysqld.pid" ]; then
     k=`cat instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysqld.pid`
     echo "Killing $k"
     kill $k
    fi
    
    sleep 2
    if [ -e "instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysqld.pid" ]; then
     echo "Mysql node 1 still running."
    else
     echo "starting node 1 mysql"
     sudo -u mysql nohup ./libexec/mysqld --defaults-file=etc/my.cnf_node1 &
    fi
    if [ -e "instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysqld.pid" ]; then
     echo "Mysql node 2 still running."
    else
     echo "starting node 2 mysql"
     sudo -u mysql nohup ./libexec/mysqld --defaults-file=etc/my.cnf_node2 &
    fi
    
    
  3. Add the following to the config files if it is not already done: "event_scheduler=ON". The config files in this article already have that setting. If you had to add this to your config, restart the MySQLd servers.
  4. Check replication. One of the two fields should be 'No'.
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running
    
  5. Install the stored procedure below on the slave.
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "source stored_procedure_rep.sp" mysql
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "source stored_procedure_rep.sp" mysql
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "source stored_procedure_rep.sp" mysql
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "source stored_procedure_rep.sp" mysql
    
  6. Wait 1 minute. Slave_IO_Running and Slave_SQL_Running should be 'Yes'.
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G"
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G"
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G"
    ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G"
    # or just ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlnode2/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running ./bin/mysql -u root -S instances/mysqlcslave1/tmp/mysql.sock -e "show slave status\G" | grep -i running
  7. "Show slave status" should have both the io_thread and sql_thread as 'Yes' after the stored procedure kicks in.

Conclusion and Future Topics

Well, there's nothing much to conclude except that you can setup a MySQL Cluster on a single box. It works for Ubuntu and CentOS pretty well.

Here are some future topics:

  1. Stress test MySQL Cluster on a single box and get it to break. Hint: The config files in this article were made so that I could load real production data on a server at work without having the cluster kick out the data nodes.
  2. Break MySQL Cluster by pounding it to death or filling up diskspace or filling up the index in memory and see what happens.
  3. Split the configurations out to two servers.
  4. Setup Statement Level Replication.
  5. Perform backups via cluster or slave.
  6. Managing the cluster and Nagios alarms for the cluster to detect when things go bad.
  7. Adding and dropping nodes manually.
  8. Creating Ubuntu and CentOS packages.
  9. Testing my SSD drive.

Some SSD Preliminary Testing

I ran a quick test on the performance of my SSD drive compared to the brand new SATA drive that I bought. However, it is not a very good test because my computer is 4.5 years old. The important thing to keep in mind is that SSD drives perform much better with random writes and reads. They are somewhat better for sequential writes and reads. For a database server, random writes and reads are the most important. When you look at the tables below, you might except the sequential copying of cds should go about as fast as sequential inserts into MySQL Cluster. However, even sequential inserts, are not exactly sequential in all respects. As I expected, straight inserts went a lot faster on the SSD drive and looked closer to random write speed improvements.

I loaded data onto both the SSD and the SATA drives I have. I have separate MySQL Cluster installations on each hard drive. My computer is from late 2004, so it probably only a SATA I bus. So this is a really bad test for testing real performance, but I just wanted to get a rough idea of what I am dealing with. Both the SATA drive and the SSD drive were brand new. I was using an SSD Vertex 60 gig drive. I loaded a 200 MB file onto the system, but, there were 4 MySQL instances running. The two data nodes for the cluster, a slave, and a cluster slave. In addition, the binlogs would have a copy of all the data for the MySQLd instances. Thus, there are 8 copies of the data (4 in the databases, 4 in logs). I expect on a system with just one MySQL instance it would run a lot faster.

For cdrom copying times of 700 megs, look at this table. The SSD drives appears to be about 66% faster. However, when you compare this to the next table, SSD shows to be even better (as expected).

Cd copy countSATA seconds SSD seconds
12820
22919
33420
43219
53019
63220
73218
83220

We can see that the MySQL Cluster is running 2 to 5 times faster on the SSD drive. This is not surprising if the latency on the SSD drive is better. The inserts below were at 1000 rows at a time. The python script has the detailed schema information. I compared 3 different points in the log files for the inserts. I compared the recent time for 1000 rows being inserted and the total time up to that point. The loading stopped at 1 million rows.

RowsSATA DriveSSD DriveTotal time Ratio1000 time ratio
122,000 rows
Query OK, 1000 rows affected (0.13 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

+-------------------------+--------+
| seconds_diff            | 122000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
|                      31 | 122000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Query OK, 1000 rows affected (0.08 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

+-------------------------+--------+
| seconds_diff            | 122000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
|                      13 | 122000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
2.31.6
715,000 rows
+-------------------------+--------+
| seconds_total           | 715000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
|                    1819 | 715000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Query OK, 1000 rows affected (4.96 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0
+-------------------------+--------+
| seconds_total           | 715000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
|                     353 | 715000 |
+-------------------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Query OK, 1000 rows affected (1.18 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0
5.14.2
1 million rows
Query OK, 1000 rows affected (4.46 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

+-------------------------+---------+
| seconds_diff            | 1000000 |
+-------------------------+---------+
|                    3188 | 1000000 |
+-------------------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Query OK, 1000 rows affected (1.40 sec)
Records: 1000  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

+-------------------------+---------+
| seconds_diff            | 1000000 |
+-------------------------+---------+
|                     743 | 1000000 |
+-------------------------+---------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
4.23.1
To reproduce the results for yourself, install MySQL Cluster twice. Once on a normal drive and once on an SSD drive.

Execute the following in the MySQL cluster for the SSD drive and then later for the normal drive and then compare the times. Also, download my insert python script. I wrote it up very quick. It isn't that elegant.

Insert_200_megs_random.py > insert1.sql
bin/mysql -u root  -S  instances/mysqlnode1/tmp/mysql.sock
Inside the mysql client program
tee insert1.log
source insert1.log

Here's the output of my dmesg, if this helps.
[    1.338264] sata_promise 0000:00:08.0: version 2.12
[    1.338294] sata_promise 0000:00:08.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    1.352185] scsi0 : sata_promise
[    1.352328] scsi1 : sata_promise
[    1.352388] scsi2 : sata_promise
[    1.352430] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xf7a00000 ata 0xf7a00200 irq 18
[    1.352434] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xf7a00000 ata 0xf7a00280 irq 18
[    1.352436] ata3: PATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xf7a00000 ata 0xf7a00300 irq 18
[    1.672036] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[    1.707733] ata1.00: ATA-8: ST31500341AS, CC1H, max UDMA/133
[    1.707736] ata1.00: 2930277168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[    1.763738] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    2.080030] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
[    2.088384] ata2.00: ATA-7: OCZ-VERTEX 1275, 00.P97, max UDMA/133
[    2.088387] ata2.00: 125045424 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[    2.096398] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    2.252082] isa bounce pool size: 16 pages
[    2.252207] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST31500341AS     CC1H PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    2.252323] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
[    2.252342] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[    2.252345] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    2.252370] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    2.252449] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 2930277168 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.50 TB/1.36 TiB)
[    2.252462] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[    2.252464] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    2.252487] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    2.252492]  sda: sda1 sda2 sda4
[    2.282713] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[    2.282781] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[    2.282842] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      OCZ-VERTEX 1275  00.P PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[    2.282924] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 125045424 512-byte hardware sectors: (64.0 GB/59.6 GiB)
[    2.282938] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    2.282941] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    2.282963] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    2.283011] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 125045424 512-byte hardware sectors: (64.0 GB/59.6 GiB)
[    2.283024] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    2.283026] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    2.283049] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

Some proc info
gt;more /proc/scsi/sg/device_strs
ATA             ST31500341AS            CC1H
ATA             OCZ-VERTEX 1275         00.P
DVDRW           IDE1008                 0055
For more info on SSD:

As a side note, SLC SSD drives last 10 times longer for writes comapared to the MLC SSD drives, from what I understand. Thus, the Intel x25-e is far more important than the Intel x25-m for database servers. You want the drives to last as long as possible and have the best random write performance. On one of my contracting jobs, because I showed them how the Vortex behaved on my home computer, I will get to test an Intel x25-e at their place. That's the second time when I invested in my computer at home it helped me in my career. The first time was getting an AMD 64 bit system before most companies had it and using it at home with Linux and MySQL. The ex complained it was a waste of money, but it was a hell of an impressive thing to say at the time during interviews that I had 64 bit Linux and MySQL running at home, and it proved to be true. If you get a good raise because you show initiative when investing money into your home equipment to prove something, it pays for itself.


Talkback: Discuss this article with The Answer Gang


Bio picture Mark leads the Ubuntu California Team. You can reach him at ubuntu.ca.team@gmail.com .

Copyright © 2009, Mark Nielsen. Released under the Open Publication License unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.

Published in Issue 168 of Linux Gazette, November 2009

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