MariaDB Xpand

Benefits

MariaDB Xpand provides many benefits:

• It combines the benefits of ClustrixDB with the benefits of MariaDB Enterprise Server.

• It is a shared-nothing Distributed SQL database that can handle large data sets, while providing SQL compatibility.

• It is highly available, and it automatically responds to node failures.

• It is fault tolerant, and it automatically protects your critical data by creating redundant copies on multiple nodes.

• It scales both reads and writes, while maintaining strong consistency and transactional isolation.

• It can elastically scale out, so that you can increase capacity and performance by simply adding nodes.

Available Versions

The version of MariaDB Xpand depends on the version of MariaDB Enterprise Server being used:

Available Platforms

MariaDB Xpand is available on select platforms:

• CentOS 7

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Next Generation of ClustrixDB

MariaDB Xpand is the next generation of ClustrixDB:

• MariaDB Xpand 5.3 is the successor to ClustrixDB 9.2, but it is more than a new release. MariaDB Xpand has a redesigned architecture that makes it a significant component of MariaDB Platform X5.

• The Xpand storage engine integrates ClustrixDB's technology with MariaDB Enterprise Server, which means that ClustrixDB's benefits can be combined with the enterprise-grade features of MariaDB Enterprise Server.

Distributed SQL

MariaDB Xpand provides distributed SQL:

• Xpand provides an SQL interface.

• Xpand is ACID compliant.

• Xpand divides tables and indexes into slices, and it distributes those slices among all the nodes.

• All constructs in Xpand (tables, indexes, lock management, etc) are distributed across all of the nodes.

• When a query is received by MariaDB Enterprise Server, it is evaluated by a query optimizer and portions of the query are sent to the relevant Xpand nodes. The results are collected and a single result-set returned to the client.

• Any node can handle any request. Transactions are automatically coordinated across nodes, and writes are automatically sent to the node where the data resides.

• Xpand executes distributed JOINs with a massively parallel processing (MPP) strategy.

• MariaDB Xpand leverages a shared-nothing architecture; memory and storage are not shared between nodes.

Highly Available

MariaDB Xpand provides high availability:

• Xpand maintains replicas of each slice, so that it can recover from a node failure without loss of data.

• Xpand can maintain multiple replicas of each slice, so it can survive failures of multiple nodes.

• Xpand is zone aware, so it can recover from an entire zone failure without loss of data.

Fault Tolerant

MariaDB Xpand is fault tolerant by design:

• Xpand's rebalancer maintains a healthy data distribution.

• When a node or zone fails, the rebalancer automatically creates new replicas for each slice to replace the failed nodes.

• When a failed node is replaced, the rebalancer automatically redistributes data again, restoring MariaDB Xpand to its intended node count.

Write Scaling

MariaDB Xpand provides write scaling:

• Every Xpand node is able to write concurrently.

• Xpand is strongly consistent, so all nodes always see the latest data.

• Xpand uses the Paxos protocol for distributed transaction resolution.

• Xpand replicates writes synchronously, and all nodes participating in a write must provide an acknowledgment before a write is complete.

• Xpand performs writes in parallel.

Scale-Out

MariaDB Xpand scales out:

• Each Xpand node is able to perform both reads and writes.

• Reads are lockless.

• Writes don't block reads.

• Causal reads are provided by design without extra configuration.

• Additional nodes can be added to increase capacity.

• When you add an Xpand node to the deployment, the rebalancing process redistributes data from the existing nodes.

• MariaDB MaxScale can be used for load balancing.

• If the spike in load was temporary, nodes can be removed to decrease capacity.

• When you remove an Xpand node from the deployment, the rebalancing process redistributes data to the remaining nodes, ensuring fault tolerance.

License

The installation process of MariaDB Xpand requires a license. For licensing details, please contact us.

For details on how to use your MariaDB Xpand license, see MariaDB Xpand Licensing.

Resources

• Xpand Storage Engine

• Distributed SQL with MariaDB Xpand

• Deploy MariaDB Xpand

• Get Started with MariaDB Xpand.