The current topology of the tpdSandBox is 13 nodes composed of:
- admin
- web01 and web02
- Maxscale/Backup
- MariaDB 1, 2 and 3
- Galera 1, 2 and 3
- ClickHouse
- Postgresql
- MongoDB
As you can see, I’m starting with an understanding of MariaDB. The nodes are meant to be reconfigurable, and I plan to use automation in order to do that (currently reviewing Ansible).
Why Start with Ubuntu 16.04
Typical corporate environments only upgrade when the previous distribution is end of life. Development and applications are typically whatever is in the distribution, rather than what is available or globally in support. Knowing the latest and greatest can be a detriment to understanding the systems that are in use today.
Additionally, I am comfortable in an Ubuntu environment.
Why MariaDB?
MariaDB is different from Oracle and Percona MySQl, and is my variant strength. Since the topology is meant to be configurable, I plan to switch out Galera with MySQL 5.7 (or 8) as I consider other types of testing.
Why Galera?
In my previous employment I had an issue with Galera and never felt I truly understood what it was doing. Additionally, Galera seems to be on a lot of people’s minds as far as employment (mainly – how they couldn’t get it to work). I am currently working on a problem with log_slave_updates between an active-active bridge where one side is a MariaDB (mDB) instance and the other side is a Galera Cluster (GC). Currently, the GC will not run changes from the MDB instance. Problematic.
Web01 and Web02
I don’t have an application to act out the load of a production server, but plan to create something similar. For now, this WordPress blog and a Zabbix monitoring server (connected to ClickHouse) will act as the application side.
I have some ideas for Zabbix plugins that I want to explore.
MaxScale and Backup
Unfortunately my skillset with Maxscale and Backup are not up to par. There are other and easier ways to do it using what’s already on the enterprise and without the need for a qualified DBA. But I also agree that it’s helpful to understand these components.
ClickHouse, Postgresql, MongoDB
The addition of these other dbms has to do with continually refreshing my skillset with them, as well as an additional avenue of testing. ie:
- how does MariaDB Columnstore match to ClickHouse
- what are the differences between using InnoDB vs Postgresql
- how does MariaDB JSON fare against MongoDB