Variable-length column support.  The NDBCLUSTER storage engine now supports variable-length column types for in-memory tables.

Previously, for example, any Cluster table having one or more VARCHAR fields which contained only relatively small values, much more memory and disk space were required when using the NDBCLUSTER storage engine than would have been the case for the same table and data using the MyISAM engine. In other words, in the case of a VARCHAR column, such a column required the same amount of storage as a CHAR column of the same size. In MySQL 5.1, this is no longer the case for in-memory tables, where storage requirements for variable-length column types such as VARCHAR and BINARY are comparable to those for these column types when used in MyISAM tables (see Section 11.7, “Data Type Storage Requirements”).

Replication with NDB Cluster.  It is now possible to use MySQL replication with Cluster databases. For details, see Section 18.6, “NDB Cluster Replication”.

Circular Replication.  Circular replication is also supported with NDB Cluster, beginning with MySQL 5.1.18. See Section 18.6.10, “NDB Cluster Replication: Multi-Master and Circular Replication”.

auto_increment_increment and auto_increment_offset.  The auto_increment_increment and auto_increment_offset server system variables are supported for NDB Cluster Replication.

Backup and restore between architectures.  It is possible to perform a Cluster backup and restore between different architectures. Previously—for example—you could not back up a cluster running on a big-endian platform and then restore from that backup to a cluster running on a little-endian system. (Bug #19255)

Multiple data nodes, multi-threaded data nodes.  NDB Cluster 7.2 supports multiple data node processes on a single host as well as multi-threaded data node processes. See Section 18.4.3, “ndbmtd — The NDB Cluster Data Node Daemon (Multi-Threaded)”, for more information.

Identifiers.  Formerly (in MySQL 5.0 and earlier), database names, table names and attribute names could not be as long for NDB tables as tables using other storage engines, because attribute names were truncated internally. In MySQL 5.1 and later, names of NDB Cluster databases, tables, and table columns follow the same rules regarding length as they do for any other storage engine.

Length of CREATE TABLE statements.  CREATE TABLE statements may be no more than 4096 characters in length. This limitation affects MySQL 5.1.6, 5.1.7, and 5.1.8 only. (See Bug #17813)

IGNORE and REPLACE functionality.  In MySQL 5.1.7 and earlier, INSERT IGNORE, UPDATE IGNORE, and REPLACE were supported only for primary keys, but not for unique keys. It was possible to work around this issue by removing the constraint, then dropping the unique index, performing any inserts, and then adding the unique index again.

This limitation was removed for INSERT IGNORE and REPLACE in MySQL 5.1.8. (See Bug #17431.)

AUTO_INCREMENT columns.  In MySQL 5.1.10 and earlier versions, the maximum number of tables having AUTO_INCREMENT columns—including those belonging to hidden primary keys—was 2048.

This limitation was lifted in MySQL 5.1.11.

Maximum number of cluster nodes.  The total maximum number of nodes in an NDB Cluster is 255, including all SQL nodes (MySQL Servers), API nodes (applications accessing the cluster other than MySQL servers), data nodes, and management servers. The total number of data nodes and management nodes is 63, of which up to 48 can be data nodes.

Recovery of memory from deleted rows.  Memory can be reclaimed from an NDB table for reuse with any NDB table by employing OPTIMIZE TABLE, subject to the following limitations:

You can regulate the effects of OPTIMIZE on performance by adjusting the value of the global system variable ndb_optimization_delay, which sets the number of milliseconds to wait between batches of rows being processed by OPTIMIZE. The default value is 10 milliseconds. It is possible to set a lower value (to a minimum of 0), but not recommended. The maximum is 100000 milliseconds (that is, 100 seconds).

Number of tables.  The maximum number of NDBCLUSTER tables in a single NDB Cluster is included in the total maximum number of NDBCLUSTER database objects (20320). (See Section 18.1.6.5, “Limits Associated with Database Objects in NDB Cluster”.)

Adding and dropping of data nodes.  In NDB Cluster 7.2 (NDB Cluster 7.0 and later), it is possible to add new data nodes to a running NDB Cluster by performing a rolling restart, so that the cluster and the data stored in it remain available to applications.

When planning to increase the number of data nodes in the cluster online, you should be aware of and take into account the following issues:

For more information, see Section 18.5.13, “Adding NDB Cluster Data Nodes Online”.

Native support for default column values.  Starting with NDB 7.1.0, default values for table columns are stored by NDBCLUSTER, rather than by the MySQL server as was previously the case. Because less data must be sent from an SQL node to the data nodes, inserts on tables having column value defaults can be performed more efficiently than before.

Tables created using previous NDB Cluster releases can still be used in NDB 7.1.0 and later, although they do not support native default values and continue to use defaults supplied by the MySQL server until they are upgraded. This can be done by means of an offline ALTER TABLE statement.

Distribution of MySQL users and privileges.  Previously, MySQL users and privileges created on one SQL node were unique to that SQL node, due to the fact that the MySQL grant tables were restricted to using the MyISAM storage engine. Beginning with NDB 7.2.0, it is possible, following installation of the NDB Cluster software and setup of the desired users and privileges on one SQL node, to convert the grant tables to use NDB and thus to distribute the users and privileges across all SQL nodes connected to the cluster. You can do this by loading and making use of a set of stored procedures defined in an SQL script supplied with the NDB Cluster distribution. For more information, see Section 18.5.14, “Distributed MySQL Privileges for NDB Cluster”.

Number of rows per partition.  Previously, a single NDB Cluster partition could hold a maximum of 46137488 rows. This limitation was removed in NDB 7.2.9. (Bug #13844405, Bug #14000373)

If you are still using a previous NDB Cluster release, you can work around this limitation by taking advantage of the fact that the number of partitions is the same as the number of data nodes in the cluster (see Section 18.1.2, “NDB Cluster Nodes, Node Groups, Replicas, and Partitions”). This means that, by increasing the number of data nodes, you can increase the available space for storing data.

NDB Cluster 7.2 also supports increasing the number of data nodes in the cluster while the cluster remains in operation. See Section 18.5.13, “Adding NDB Cluster Data Nodes Online”, for more information.

It is also possible to increase the number of partitions for NDB tables by using explicit KEY or LINEAR KEY partitioning (see Section 19.2.5, “KEY Partitioning”).