Announcing ClusterControl 1.5 – Featuring Automatic Backup Verification and Cloud Upload

Today we are excited to announce the 1.5 release of ClusterControl – the all-inclusive database management system that lets you easily deploy, monitor, manage and scale highly available open source databases – and load balancers – in any environment: on-premise or in the cloud.

ClusterControl 1.5 provides an array of exciting new backup functionalities to ensure that your data is secure and available whenever disaster strikes. The release also provides expanded PostgreSQL, MariaDB and MySQL NDB Cluster support.

Release Highlights

Cloud Services (AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage)

• Manual upload or schedule backups to be uploaded after completion to the cloud.
• Download and restore backups from a cloud storage.

Backup (MySQL)

• Backup individual databases separately (mysqldump only).
• Upload, download and restore backups stored in the cloud.
• Trigger a verification and restore of a backup after N hours of completion.
• Rebuild a replication slave by staging it from an existing backup.
• Add a new replication slave by staging it from an existing backup.

PostgreSQL

• New backup method pg_basebackup which makes a binary copy of the database files.
• Synchronous replication failover (support for synchronous_standby_names).
• Support for HAProxy with Keepalived.
• Support for PostgreSql 10.

ProxySQL

• Mass import existing database users into ProxySQL.
• Add and modify scheduler scripts.

Misc

• MariaDB v10.2 support (Galera and MySQL Replication).
• MySQL Cluster(NDB) v7.5 support.
• Added support to show and filter DB status variables for MongoDB nodes.
• HTML formatted alarm and digest emails.
• Multiple NICs supports when deploying Load balancers (HAProxy).
• Continuous improvements to UX/UI and performance.
• New cmon-cloud process and clud client to handle cloud services.
• New Ops Report: Database Growth

• ClusterControl Administration Guide
• Upgrade instructions

New and Enhanced Backup Functions

ClusterControl 1.5 marks the first steps towards providing full seamless integration between ClusterControl and the Cloud. It provides our users with the options of migrating their data to the cloud while still benefiting from the features and functionality that ClusterControl has to offer.

• AWS & Google Cloud Services Integration: ClusterControl now offers full integration for database backups for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Services. Backups can now be executed, scheduled, downloaded and restored directly from your cloud provider of choice. This ability provides increased redundancy, better disaster recovery options, and benefits in both performance and cost savings.
• New Backup Wizard: ClusterControl 1.5 comes with a complete redesign of our backup wizard. The wizard lets you perform and schedule backups using a variety of options and technologies to ensure your data is protected, accurate and ready to be restored on a moment’s notice.
• Single Database Backup & Restores for MySQL: With ClusterControl 1.5 you now have the ability to backup and restore individual MySQL databases rather than being forced to do it all at one time. This new feature can reduce the burden on those users who manage hundreds of databases within their environment.
• Automatic Backup Verification: ClusterControl 1.5 brings you peace of mind by automatically verifying the integrity of your backup data. It will perform a restore of your backup data, and alert in case of issues.
• Creating & Restoring Slaves from Backup: In the past a user would need to leverage their Master to create or restore new slaves… this creates an undue burden on the system as it performs a full backup on the master. In ClusterControl 1.5, you can now create new nodes or rebuild existing slaves from existing backup files, removing the burden on the master and ensuring you continue to operate at peak performance.

Improved Support for PostgreSQL

ClusterControl continues to expand its support for PostgreSQL. In our new 1.5 release, we can now support PostgreSQL 10 which offers a number of new features such as support for local replication, declarative table partitioning, improved query parallelism, quorum commit for synchronous replication, and more!

• PostgreSQL Proxy and Virtual IP: ClusterControl now supports failover of database connections with HAProxy, Keepalived and Virtual IP – a battle-tested combination.
• PostgreSQL Synchronous Replication Failover: ClusterControl 1.5 now fully supports Synchronous Replication Failover for PostgreSQL. This function minimizes the risk of data loss between Master and Slaves should something break with the Master before it has a chance to fully synchronize. This allows you to increase reliability across your servers.
• New Backup Method: PostgreSQL has an additional backup method pg_basebackup that can be used for online binary backups. Backups taken with pg_basebackup can be used later for point-in-time recovery and as the starting point for a log shipping or streaming replication standby servers.

Improved Support for ProxySQL

ProxySQL enables MySQL, MariaDB and Percona XtraDB database systems to easily manage intense, high-traffic database applications without losing availability.

• Script Scheduling: ClusterControl now provides support for the ProxySQL scheduler, a cron-like module which allows the load balancer to start external scripts on a regular interval. This provides users with full control of what scripts run and when, allowing you to tweak your instances performance at a very granular level.
• User Management: Rather than create or removing users one at a time from ProxySQL, ClusterControl now allows you to import a large batch of users.

Support for New Versions of MariaDB & MySQL NDB Cluster

• MariaDB 10.2: ClusterControl now supports MariaDB Server 10.2. This new version provides even greater integration with Galera Cluster, MariaDB’s HA solution of choice, and also features enhancements to SQL like windows functions, common table expressions, and JSON functions.
• MySQL NDB Cluster 7.5: ClusterControl now supports MySQL Cluster (NDB) 7.5. The latest MySQL Cluster release using the NDB file system offers a variety of improvements and optimizations. These improvements include enhancing the ndbinfo database, records-per-key optimization, and many more!

Additional New Functionalities

• New Notification Emails: In the 1.5 release of ClusterControl, we have revamped the design of the email notifications and alerts which are sent from the system to make them easier to read and understand.
• New Operational Report: ClusterControl 1.5 introduces a new operational report called “Database Growth.” The report shows a snapshot of your database as it exists today as well as data for the last day, last week, and last month – useful for capacity planning. The report also allows you to click into each period to deep dive into the tables to track growth at an even more granular level.