Strategy

Strategy: Drop Memcached, Add More MySQL Servers

Todd Hoff

Aug 17, 2008 — 1 min read

Update 2: Michael Galpin in Cache Money and Cache Discussions likes memcached for it's expiry policy, complex graph data, process data, but says MySQL has many advantages: SQL, Uniform Data Access, Write-through, Read-through, Replication, Management, Cold starts, LRU eviction.
Update: Dormando asks Should you use memcached? Should you just shard mysql more?. The idea of caching is the most important part of caching as it transports you beyond a simple CRUD worldview. Plan for caching and sharding by properly abstracting data access methods. Brace for change. Be ready to shard, be ready to cache. React and change to what you push out which is actually popular, vs over planning and wasting valuable time.

Feedster's François Schiettecatte wonders if Fotolog's 21 memcached servers wouldn't be better used to further shard data by adding more MySQL servers? He mentions Feedster was able to drop memcached once they partitioned their data across more servers. The algorithm: partition until all data resides in memory and then you may not need an additional memcached layer.

Parvesh Garg goes a step further and asks why people think they should be using MySQL at all?

The Death of Read Replication by Brian Aker. Caching layers have replaced read replication. Cache can't fix a broken database layer. Partition the data that feeds the cache tier: "Keep your front end working through the cache. Keep all of your data generation behind it."

Read replication with MySQL by François Schiettecatte. Read replication is dead and it should be used only for backup purposes. Take the memory used for caching and give it to your database servers.

Replication++, Replication 2.0, Replication.Next by Ronald Bradford. What should read replication be used for?

Replication, caching, and partitioning by Greg Linden. Caching overdone because it adds complexity, latency on a cache miss, and inefficiently uses cluster resources. Hitting disk is the problem. Shard more and get your data in memory.

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