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 11.6, “Data Type Storage Requirements”).

Replication with MySQL Cluster.  It is now possible to use MySQL replication with Cluster databases. For details, see Section 17.6, “MySQL Cluster Replication”.

Circular Replication.  Circular replication is also supported with MySQL Cluster, beginning with MySQL 5.1.18. See Section 17.6.10, “MySQL 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 MySQL 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.  MySQL Cluster NDB 7.2 supports multiple data node processes on a single host as well as multi-threaded data node processes. See Section 17.4.3, “ndbmtd — The MySQL 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 MySQL 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 a MySQL 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 MySQL Cluster is included in the total maximum number of NDBCLUSTER database objects (20320). (See Section 17.1.6.5, “Limits Associated with Database Objects in MySQL Cluster”.)

Adding and dropping of data nodes.  In MySQL Cluster NDB 7.2 (MySQL Cluster NDB 7.0 and later), it is possible to add new data nodes to a running MySQL 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 17.5.13, “Adding MySQL Cluster Data Nodes Online”.

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 MySQL Cluster NDB 7.2.0, it is possible, following installation of the MySQL 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 MySQL Cluster distribution. For more information, see Section 17.5.14, “Distributed MySQL Privileges for MySQL Cluster”.

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

If you are still using a previous MySQL 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 17.1.2, “MySQL 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.

MySQL Cluster NDB 7.2 also supports increasing the number of data nodes in the cluster while the cluster remains in operation. See Section 17.5.13, “Adding MySQL 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 18.2.5, “KEY Partitioning”).