MySQL Scale-Out

Scale-out using MySQL enables organizations to cost-effectively solve database capacity issues that result from increased traffic and transaction volumes. In particular, scale-out with MySQL provides organizations with the following advantages:

• Easily and cost-effectively add capacity to your database infrastructure using open source software and commodity hardware.
• Reduced hardware costs by incrementally adding several low-cost commodity systems vs. upgrading high-cost mainframe-class systems
• Reduce software costs and eliminate up-front licensing by scaling out with MySQL
• Improve response time and availability by improving the performance of your system so users experience fewer interruptions.
• Improve scalability using MySQL Replication to distribute large workloads to individual server nodes for execution.
• Increased flexibility to right-size the initial purchase of commodity hardware and software, incrementally add capacity.

Virtually any application that has a rapidly growing volume of users, transactions or data may be a candidate for more cost-effective deployment using open source technology combined with a scale-out architecture. MySQL is widely used for the following Scale-Out architectures:

• Web Scale-Out to improve the performance, scalability, and availability of web applications such as e-commerce, content management, session management, search, and security.
• Data Warehousing Scale-Out to improve the performance and availability of traditional data warehousing (e.g. centralized data warehouse and data marts) as well as real-time Operational Data Stores.

MySQL provides a comprehensive feature set that is ideally suited for delivering scale-out applications. The following are the key scale-out features and technologies which have been implemented in MySQL.

Ease of Deployment - MySQL makes it easy to deploy a scale-out architecture without the need to hire high-cost IT personnel with specialized skill sets.

Master Slave Replication - Using MySQL master-slave replication, organizations are able to cost-effectively provide the scalability and the high availability necessary to accommodate the exponentially growing capacity demands.

Pluggable Storage Engine Architecture - MySQL provides unmatched performance compared to other databases. For example, Friendster handles 1.5 billion MySQL queries a day.

High Speed Full Text Search - High Speed Full Text Search enables Craigslist to serve approximately 50 million searches per month at a rate of up to 60 searches per second.

Low Administration Cost - The fact that organizations can set up a MySQL Server in less than 15 minutes enables them to significantly reduce the time it takes to administer the server and focus on the development of core applications and services.

Optimized Connection Handling - MySQL connection handling is web optimized, providing very high performance, and is very scalable. MySQL does not require complex connection pooling to deliver scalability.

High Reliability, Security, & Uptime - MySQL Network provides a comprehensive set of enterprise-grade software, support and services directly from the developers of MySQL to ensure the highest levels of reliability, security and uptime.

Broad Cross-Platform Support - MySQL's cross platform support has allowed developers and administrators with platform specific skills to be immediately productive using MySQL.