Differences Between the NDB and InnoDB Storage Engines

The NDB Cluster NDB storage engine is implemented using a distributed, shared-nothing architecture, which causes it to behave differently from InnoDB in a number of ways. For those unaccustomed to working with NDB, unexpected behaviors can arise due to its distributed nature with regard to transactions, foreign keys, table limits, and other characteristics. These are shown in the following table:

Feature

InnoDB 1.1

NDB Cluster NDB 7.5

MySQL Server Version

5.7

5.7

InnoDB Version

InnoDB 5.7.19

InnoDB 5.7.19

NDB Cluster Version

N/A

NDB 7.5.7

Storage Limits

64TB

3TB

(Practical upper limit based on 48 data nodes with 64GB RAM each; can be increased with disk-based data and BLOBs)

Foreign Keys

Yes

Yes.

Transactions

All standard types

READ COMMITTED

MVCC

Yes

No

Data Compression

Yes

No

(NDB Cluster checkpoint and backup files can be compressed)

Large Row Support (> 14K)

Supported for VARBINARY, VARCHAR, BLOB, and TEXT columns

Supported for BLOB and TEXT columns only

(Using these types to store very large amounts of data can lower NDB Cluster performance)

Replication Support

Asynchronous and semisynchronous replication using MySQL Replication

Automatic synchronous replication within an NDB Cluster .

Asynchronous replication between NDB Cluster s, using MySQL Replication

Scaleout for Read Operations

Yes (MySQL Replication)

Yes (Automatic partitioning in NDB Cluster ; NDB Cluster Replication)

Scaleout for Write Operations

Requires application-level partitioning (sharding)

Yes (Automatic partitioning in NDB Cluster is transparent to applications)

High Availability (HA)

Requires additional software

Yes (Designed for 99.999% uptime)

Node Failure Recovery and Failover

Requires additional software

Automatic

(Key element in NDB Cluster architecture)

Time for Node Failure Recovery

30 seconds or longer

Typically < 1 second

Real-Time Performance

No

Yes

In-Memory Tables

No

Yes

(Some data can optionally be stored on disk; both in-memory and disk data storage are durable)

NoSQL Access to Storage Engine

Yes

Yes

Multiple APIs, including Memcached, Node.js/JavaScript, Java, JPA, C++, and HTTP/REST

Concurrent and Parallel Writes

Not supported

Up to 48 writers, optimized for concurrent writes

Conflict Detection and Resolution (Multiple Replication Masters)

No

Yes

Hash Indexes

No

Yes

Online Addition of Nodes

Read-only replicas using MySQL Replication

Yes (all node types)

Online Upgrades

No

Yes

Online Schema Modifications

Yes, as part of MySQL 5.6.

Yes.