In this video, you will see how easy it is to create a clustered MySQL database through VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) v1.4. The video shows how to deploy a clustered MySQL database at deployment time rather than building a standalone MySQL database and then enabling a clustered configuration. You will see how a ‘clustered’ IP address is used to act as a front-end IP address for the cluster, and also how a read-write access port of 6446 is used to connect to the database rather than the default port of 3306. Finally, you will see how to use the…
I created a short video on how to cluster a standalone PostgreSQL database in VMware Data Services Manager. PostgreSQL is a very popular virtualized workload to run on vSphere infrastructure. In this video, you will see how easy it is to create a clustered PostgreSQL database through VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) in just a few clicks. You will see how when a Read Replica is created, a PG_Monitor VM is also created. The PC_Monitor acts as a quorum or witness, and handles promotion of Read Replicas to primary role in the event of a failover. We will see how…
I continue my journey to learn more about VMware Data Services Manager (DSM). Today, I turn my attention to clustering MySQL to make it highly available on vSphere infrastructure. This is subtlety different to the previous exercise of enabling HA on PostgreSQL. With the MySQL HA implementation, there is no requirement to deploy an additional VM to behave as the witness/quorum such as the PG_Monitor in the case of PostgreSQL. To make MySQL highly available, MySQL InnoDB Cluster is used. This utilizes a feature called group replication to synchronize the different read replicas. It also supports the concept of a…
One the features of Data Services Manager (DSM) that stood out for me was how it could very easily make a standalone database highly available. With just a single click, users can deploy the necessary monitoring VMs (in the case of PostgreSQL, a PG_Monitor) and additional Read Only Replicas. In this post, I will show how to create a highly available database using DSM. I will highlight some of the requirements, and also some of what is taking place under the covers while the HA operation is in progress. Requirements Let’s begin by outline some of the requirements. The main…
With the release of vSphere 6.0 earlier this year, VMware introduced the eagerly anticipated VVols or Virtual Volumes. As we see more and more traction around VVols, a specific question has come up a number of times already. The question is basically: “What happens to VVols if I lose my VASA Provider or my vCenter Server, or indeed both of these components? Will I still have access to my devices?”.
I had a few queries recently on how Virtual Volumes (VVols) worked with vSphere HA. In particular, I had a number of questions around whether or not VVol datastores could be used as a heartbeat datastore by vSphere HA. The answer is yes, the VVol datastore can be used for vSphere HA datastore heartbeating. If you want to see how, please read on. I think these queries may have arisen due to the fact that we do not use datastore heartbeating with Virtual SAN (VSAN). Just by way of reminder, the master host in a vSphere HA cluster uses a…