Development Environment for Testing MySQL Replication

Question

Is there an easy way to setup an environment on one machine (or a VM) with MySQL replication? I would like to put together a proof of concept of MySQL replication with one Master write instance and two slave instances for reads.

I can see doing it across 2 or 3 VMs running on my computer, but that would really bog down my system. I'd rather have everything running on the same VM. What's the best way to proof out scalability solutions like this in a local dev environment?

Thanks for your help,

Dave

Answer 1

I think to truly test MySQL Replication it is important to do so in realistic constraints.

If you put all the replicate nodes under one operating system then you no longer have the bandwidth constraint, the data transfer speed would be much higher that what you would get if those replicate DBs are on different sites.

Everything under one VM is a shortcut to configurations, for instance it does not make you go through the configuration of the networking.

I suggest you use multiple VMs, even if you have to put them under one physical machine, you can always configure the hypervisor to make the packets go through a router, in which case the I/O will be bound by whatever the network interface has as throughput.

I can see doing it across 2 or 3 VMs running on my computer, but that would really bog down my system.

You can try and make a few VMs with JeOS (Just Enough OS) versions of the operating system you want. I know Ubuntu has one and it can boot on 128 RAM, which makes it convenient to deploy lots of cloned VMs under one physical machine without monster RAM.

Next step would be doing the same thing on a cloud (Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS) provider, and try your setup on different geographical sites.

Answer 2

If what you're testing is machine-to-machine replication, then setting up multiple VMs on a virtual private network would be the correct environment to test it. If you use Ubuntu Server, you don't have to install more than you actually need -- just give the VMs enough space for a base install + MySQL + your data. Memory usage can be as little as 256MB per VM. All you have to do is suspend or shutdown the VMs when you're not running a full-up test.

I've had situations where I was running 4 or more VMs simultaneously on my workstation, either for development or testing purposes -- it's not that taxing unless you're trying to do video rendering in each VM.