a9s MySQL – A New Service for a9s PaaS

anynines is pleased to announce the release of a9s MySQL Data Service, ready to bind your applications in its traditional Cloud Foundry way. Our a9s MySQL enables on-demand provisioning of VM-based, dedicated MySQL server instances. You can create instances of MySQL servers using Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (CF CLI).

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Current Features
• Use a9s MySQL with an Application
• Our a9s MySQL Service Plans
• Resource Allocation for a9s MySQL Service Instances
• Upgrade the Service Instance to Another Service Plan
• Conclusion

Overview

a9s MySQL service instances are created with dedicated VM’s on our a9s PaaS environment. You can use cf create-service command for service instance creation.

a9s MySQL service instances are highly isolated and shielded by infrastructure virtualization mechanisms. Since then, the provision of instances along with VM orchestration is completely automated.

Due to the on-demand provisioning of VMs, only existing service instances allocate infrastructure resources and these resources are released only when they are destroyed.  Using on-demand provisioning, we end up in an unlimited number of service instance creation capability by its design.

Current Features

The current version of a9s MySQL includes the following key features:

Feature

Benefit

On­-Demand Service Instance Provisioning

a9s MySQL deploys MySQL instances automatically. Developers can provision a single-VM MySQL server using a single command.

Service Instance Isolation

Each MySQL server runs on a dedicated VM to ensure bad neighborhood protection in order to be aligned with enterprise security requirements.

a9s MySQL uses Cloud Foundry security groups to prevent network connections being established by unauthorized apps.

Service Instance Capacity Upgrade

Cloud Foundry Service Plan updates allow upgrades to the RAM, CPU, and storage capacity for your MySQL instances.

Logging and Monitoring

Each MySQL service instance provides log messages and MySQL-specific metrics to one or more syslog/graphite endpoints. You can configure the syslog/graphite endpoint to receive logging and monitoring information.

Deployment Updater

This errand automatically updates the stemcell and all provisioned a9s MySQL service instances to their latest version.

Service Guard

The Service Guard creates Cloud Foundry security groups for your service instance VMs.
When the IP address of a service instance changes, the guard updates the security group. The Service Guard also restarts the application instances bound to the affected service instance. The instances of one app are restarted one by one to avoid downtime.

High Availability

a9s MySQL ensures high availability.
The Consul-based internal DNS system provided by a9s- Consul DNS ensures that the connected application always connects to a working node.

Connect with MySQL Client and MySQL Workbench.

a9s MySQL service instances can be connected from MySQL Command line client and also accessible from MySQL Workbench. For detailed instructions, please do follow our blog post “How to connect a9s MySQL with MySQL Client and Workbench”

Use a9s MySQL with an Application

To use our a9s MySQL with an application, you need the following prerequisites:

• A trial or a premium a9s Public PaaS user account. To register with our a9s Public PaaS, please do visit https://paas.anynines.com/,sign up for an account and benefit from our 30 Day-Free Trial
• CF CLI should be installed on your machine. To install CF CLI, please visit https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/cf-cli/install-go-cli.html and follow up the instructions of your respective operating system.
• To deploy an application with a9s MySQL service, please do follow our blog post “WordPress – How to deploy it on the a9s Public PaaS”.

Our a9s MySQL Service Plans

To view our a9s MySQL plans, one should use the below command.

$ cf marketplace -s a9s-mysql101

Getting service plan information for service a9s-mysql101 as your_username…
OK

service plan

description

free or paid

mysql-cluster-medium

a medium replica set

paid

mysql-cluster-small

a small replica set

paid

mysql-single-medium

a medium single instance

paid

mysql-single-small

a small single instance

free

Resource Allocation for a9s MySQL Service Instances

We have allocated resources for our a9s MySQL as per the below table:

Service Plan

Mem (GiB)

vCPU

<mysql-single-small

2

1

mysql-single-medium

4

2

mysql-cluster-small

2

1

mysql-cluster-medium

4

2

Please note: All cluster plans will include three nodes and on-request, we can add upon resources based on the customer request. For any customizations, please feel free to contact: https://www.anynines.com/contact or through email to support@anynines.com

Upgrade the Service Instance to Another Service Plan

Once created, you can upgrade your service instance to another, larger service plan. A larger service plan provides more CPU, RAM, and storage. For more information, see the Update a Service Instance of the Managing Service Instances with the cf CLI topic.

1<strong>$ cf update-service my-mysql-service -p mysql-single-medium</strong>

Here are the plans you can upgrade to, depending on the one you are currently using:

Base Plan

Target Plan

mysql-single-small

mysql-single-medium
mysql-cluster-small
mysql-cluster-medium

mysql-single-medium

mysql-cluster-medium

mysql-cluster-small

mysql-cluster-medium

Conclusion

a9s MySQL Data Service is a very useful service to build up web portals and blogging platforms. In future, we can expect features like dashboard, providing support for backup trigger and restore facilities and so on.