Percona launches XtraDB Cluster for MySQL database high availability

Analyst: Matt Aslett 10 Apr, 2012

Percona has announced a number of enhancements to its MySQL database-related technology to coincide with its hosting of the MySQL Conference and Expo. The launch of XtraDB Cluster, based on Codership's Galera software, is significant in that expands the company's focus to address the large proportion of the MySQL user base that does not have requirements for the high-performance expertise the company is best known for.

The 451 Take We have seen increased interest from the MySQL community in the Galera synchronous replication library, and it is no surprise to see one of the MySQL supporters pick it up and throw their weight behind it. Percona is well-respected for its MySQL expertise, as well as its consulting and support services, especially in high-performance deployments. We noted previously that Percona had wider ambitions in terms of being a mainstream provider of MySQL support for enterprise deployments, providing a complement to its focus on high performance and scalability, and XtraDB Cluster provides it with a differentiated product with which to target more mainstream users.

Context We noted in December 2011 that MySQL support and services provider Percona was increasing its influence in the ecosystem of products and services for Oracle's MySQL database, as evidenced by its hosting of the MySQL Conference and Expo. As the event gets underway in Santa Clara (April 10-12), the company has announced a number of enhancements to its technology portfolio,
Copyright 2012 - The 451 Group 1

including the launch of XtraDB Cluster, which is particularly significant in expanding the company's addressable market. Formed to offer consulting services, training and custom development for the MySQL database, Percona always had a significant focus on projects with the greatest need for high performance. That focus continues with the company's support subscription offering for Oracle MySQL, Oracle MySQL Cluster, MariaDB, Amazon RDS for MySQL and the Drizzle project, as well as its own Percona Server distribution of MySQL, which includes performance-related patches and fixes. The company has now amassed over 1,400 customers for those services and subscription offerings, up from 1,000 a year ago. However, the new XtraDB Cluster product is targeted at the estimated 80% of MySQL users that do not have the sort of high-performance requirements for which Percona is best known. Based on the Galera synchronous multi-master replication software created by Codership, it is designed to simplify high availability of MySQL databases using the InnoDB storage engine (and Percona's XtraDB variant), especially in low bandwidth environments, making it suitable for replication to cloud platforms, according to Percona. XtraDB Cluster has been jointly developed with, and will be jointly supported by, Codership, and includes automatic node provisioning, multi-master replication and parallel replication capabilities. Percona XtraDB Cluster is open source and freely available as a stand-alone offering, with 24x7 support available as part of Percona's MySQL Support subscription. In addition to the launch of XtraDB Cluster, the company has announced the release of XtraBackup 2.0 for MySQL and Percona Server, which includes improvements to the backup software to support XtraDB Cluster, as well as parallel compression and streaming incremental backups to increase backup performance. Additionally, the company released Percona Toolkit 2.1 the latest version of its suite of tools for Percona support staff, including a tool that enables online schema changes and the alpha release of its MySQL PAM Authentication module, designed to be an open source alternative to Oracle's external authentication for Pluggable Authentication Modules, which is only available with MySQL Enterprise Edition. Competition While Percona's most direct competition is from MySQL owner and developer Oracle, Percona's focus on high performance MySQL installations has enabled it to operate as a complement to Oracle's more mainstream MySQL support offering. The launch of Percona's first annual support subscription for MySQL in late 2010 was an indication that it was looking to challenge Oracle more directly, and the fact that XtraDB Cluster is designed to target mainstream users is further proof.
Copyright 2012 - The 451 Group 2

Specifically, XtraDB Cluster is likely to be considered as an alternative to Oracle's MySQL Cluster, with the key differentiator being that while MySQL Cluster is based on the NDB storage engine, rather than MySQL's default InnoDB storage engine, XtraDB Cluster is designed to work with InnoDB and Percona's XtraDB variant. Percona also sees Schooner Information Technology's SchoonerSQL as a key rival. It is also based on MySQL and InnoDB, and offers automatic failover and recovery across local area networks via synchronous replication. Unlike XtraDB Cluster, Schooner's high availability and synchronous replication capabilities are not open source. Continuent must also be considered a key competitor, with its Tungsten open source asynchronous replication and clustering software, as well as its partnership with MySQL support and services provider SkySQL. Other MySQL support providers include Monty Program, OpenLogic, Open Query, Blue Gecko and Pythian Group's MySQL consulting and support practice. SWOT Analysis
Strengths Percona is well known and respected in the MySQL community for its support and expertise, especially for high-performance issues. Opportunities High availability and replication performance are ongoing issues with MySQL, so the company has picked a good technology with which to expand its addressable market. Weaknesses That high-performance focus may have limited its profile in the past to some extent, but that is being addressed as the company looks at wider adoption. Threats Oracle looms large over the rest of the MySQL ecosystem, and has shown in recent years that it is willing to invest in improving the performance and capabilities of MySQL itself.

Copyright 2012 - The 451 Group

Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; 2011. This report was originally published within 451 Researchs Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: www.451research.com

Copyright 2012 - The 451 Group