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Transaction History Log (THL) files are the core of Tungsten Replication, containing the actual MySQL write events that are replicated to the replicas. These files can take up considerable amounts of disk space, making them of interest for housekeeping operations to limit the consumption and ultimately, the cost. This blog post will walk you through THL management, along with the new command `tpm purge-thl` which helps automate the process when THL needs to be removed prior to the automatic rotation window.

We are pleased to announce that Tungsten Clustering and Tungsten Replicator GA versions 7.0.1 are now available. This new minor release includes 52 new features and improvements, including two critical bug fixes. Read this blog to learn about the new v7.0.1 release!

Performance tuning any system provides more speed for the same hardware spend, gives the end-user a better, faster experience and typically reduces the stress on staff all around. Security tuning locks down critical data to prevent unauthorized access. Today we will explore both the security and performance enhancements available for the Tungsten Replicator THL sub-system as of version 7.x.

We are pleased to announce that Tungsten Clustering and Tungsten Replicator GA versions 7.0 are now available. This new major release includes the Tungsten RESTful API (API v2.0), enhanced security, monitoring, performance, management, new commands, a new and improved Dashboard, and new Dynamic Active/Active (DAA) topology. Tungsten v7.0 is the culmination of years of planning and work, and it lays the foundation for even more pinnacle developments. Read this blog to learn about the new v7 release!

Recently, a Continuent customer asked: “What is your approach for scaling up MySQL clusters for a higher number of queries per second and larger data sets?” Scaling, like availability, is a multifaceted question. In this blog post we will detail and discuss the best practices for scaling Tungsten Clusters.

Recently a customer asked, “Are there any issues with running a specific node with parallel apply enabled, and the rest of the nodes using a single stream (parallel disabled)? Just curious because that would be easiest for A/B testing of the replication effects.” Firstly, the answer is yes, you may certainly enable Parallel Apply on a single node within a Tungsten Cluster.

In this blog post we explore the implications and best practices for using Parallel Apply in this way.

SmartScale is a special mode of the Tungsten Connector (aka Tungsten Proxy), which allows read requests to be intelligently routed to either a replica or the primary to ensure that the data returned is not stale. This feature is available when the Connector is running in the application-layer Proxy mode. Learn more about the behavior of SmartScale in this blog.

Application performance and MySQL database responsiveness is always high priority for highly-available, business-critical use cases. That’s why Tungsten Clustering offers features and options to tune for maximum performance, such as Parallel Apply. When does Parallel Apply work best? What are the limitations? To find out, read this blog from MySQL industry vet, Eric M. Stone, the COO of Continuent!

How the Continuent Proxy selects database cluster nodes for executing read operations.

This blog discusses Asynchronous versus Synchronous MySQL replication for MySQL clustering. Synchronous replication is viewed as the ‘holy grail’ of clustering. But unfortunately, when something is too good to be true, it often is. Before the Tungsten cluster solution Continuent built two synchronous replication cluster solutions (m/cluster, uni/cluster), but we abandoned those for good reasons.

ProductIP has been a Continuent customer since November 2014 and is sharing its Continuent experience here: from initially setting up their infrastructure in Hong Kong to running a geographically distributed MySQL database replication and clustering environment with Continuent Tungsten, read about their journey with us in this guest post.

This month we’re celebrating our 4th - or is it our 20th? - anniversary: read about our history and where we are today on the path to more years of MySQL availability and continuous operations.