Load Balancing MySQL Cluster SQL Nodes

[Jill Rochelle]

I've been researching for a "best solution" for applying a load balancer in front of the sql nodes in our cluster; open source.

Our application requires many writes so it is important to have the following if possible 1)everything in sync at all times (that's why we choose cluster instead of master-slave) -- currently using 5.0 since 5.1 is still beta 2)load balancing and automatic failover for reads and writes

Some of the products I've looked at are 1) HAProxy - no automatic failover 2) MySQL Proxy - doesn't like cluster technology from what I gather (haven't actually tried it) 3) Sequoia - In order to get the write balancing you have to know table column names and their uniqueness (time consuming and info not readily available) 4) SQL Relay - no failover built in 5) Balance - currently looking at and testing.

Is there anyone that is currently doing this successfully with an open source solution? If so, what are you using or how are you doing it? What are your thoughts?

I'm fairly new to all this so if I'm on the wrong track, speak up. :-)

Thank you!