Re: SQL Cluster hardware/software questions
Leon,
I will share my experience with great pleasure, as I have been facing similar problem for almost 2 months now. I think Adam has already gave you good answers, but still I have my own opinion that I would like to add.
(2) the Management node is only used to manage the SQL Cluster like starting, stopping, backups etc?
Yes, but also if your data or api (SQL) node crashes and you start it again they connect to your management server, although it's process does not take any cpu or memory.
(3) the Data node is place where the data is actually stored I assume?
yes, data + indexes.
(4) Can we combine the SQL and data node to 1 server?
Yes. My tests shows that in this case with high load quiries will be executed really faster, than placing api node on different box. MySQLd proccess will take extra memory and CPU, although amount of memory is configurable as per normal mysql server.
(5) Can we combine the Management and SQL node to 1 server?
Of course, but people say that it's not a good idea to combine management and data node together in 1 box.
(6) what are the hardware requirements for each node? The data node should be scsi and a lot of RAM installed but should the SQL and Management nodes be the same or can they run without lots of RAM etc?
RAM, RAM and one more time - RAM. :-) And I suggest you to use DualChannel RAM as well, because all data is in RAM, CPU is waiting to data from RAM most of the time.
(7) Is it true now to say, if you have only 4 Gb of ram in the server it is nonsense to have 150 Gb of disk space in the server (ofcourse the os and software takes some but not 100 Gb) ?
What's wrong with 150Gb disk? I think that even 80Gb big disk for data nodes is quite enough.
I also think that SCSI is good, but it's not so extreamly important for cluster now, as it keeps all in main memory and is using disk just for backups and checkpoints. We are using SATA without any raid and it's quite good and not so expensive as SCSI. Please also think and calculate how much space you will need, as it was a big suprise for us, when 3.6Gb big MYISAM database grew to 7Gb when moved to cluster. And 1Gbit LAN is also a good idea on ALL components of the cluster.
Regards,
Anton.