It does look like I'm falling behind a little in posting at the moment. I figured that Elisse has probably posted a fair few more articles than me. So I checked the database.

+--------+---------------+
| author | count(author) |
+--------+---------------+
| elisse |            35 |
| hayden |            33 |
+--------+---------------+

Looks like we're not that far apart after all - remember, I hadn't written this article when I checked, so we're now only one off.

On the subject of databases, last week it was decided at work that we didn't actually need a second, linux based, web server. What we really needed was a fully redundant web cluster. This involves two load balanced web servers, which I've not got too much to do with.

However that means having a redundant database. So I've now researched and put together my first MySQL cluster, which I'm pretty happy with. It's six machines, which includes two data nodes, two SQL nodes and redundant load balancers - one of which doubles as a management node. Fortunately for me Stewart now works for MySQL AB on their cluster project and pointed me in the right direction.

Now I've just got to wrangle the load balancers into load balancing two web servers as well and we'll be off. It's proving slightly more difficult than the rest of it though. Then I can get down to the nitty gritty of optimising the cluster.

Something else that's cool is that Vim 7.0 is out, and it highlights matching brackets, bracers etc. which is great.

That's probably about enough geeky stuff, go to drag Elisse away from her flute practice so we can go and organise some dinner - or I'll do it myself.