A new cluster management server startup option --bind-address makes it possible to restrict management client connections to ndb_mgmd to a single host and port. For more information, see ndb_mgmd — The MySQL Cluster Management Server Daemon.

It is now possible to control whether fixed-width or variable-width storage is used for a given column of an NDB table by means of the COLUMN_FORMAT specifier as part of the column's definition in a CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE statement.

It is also possible to control whether a given column of an NDB table is stored in memory or on disk, using the STORAGE specifier as part of the column's definition in a CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE statement.

For permitted values and other information about COLUMN_FORMAT and STORAGE, see CREATE TABLE Syntax.

Online ADD COLUMN, ADD INDEX, and DROP INDEX operations can now be performed explicitly for NDB tables—that is, without copying or locking of the affected tables—using ALTER ONLINE TABLE. Indexes can also be created and dropped online using CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX, respectively, using the ONLINE keyword.

You can force operations that would otherwise be performed online to be done offline using the OFFLINE keyword.

Renaming of tables and columns for NDB and MyISAM tables is performed in place without table copying.

For more information, see ALTER TABLE Online Operations in MySQL Cluster, CREATE INDEX Syntax, and DROP INDEX Syntax.

Cluster Replication: The protocol for handling global checkpoints has been changed. It is now possible to control how often the GCI number is updated, and how often global checkpoints are written to disk, using the TimeBetweenEpochs configuration parameter. This improves the reliability and performance of MySQL Cluster Replication.

GCPs handled using the new protocol are sometimes referred to as “micro-GCPs”.

Cluster Replication: Multi-way replication failover and recovery for NDB is facilitated with the introduction of the --ndb-log-orig option. When mysqld is started with this option, the originating server ID and epoch of each binlog event is recorded in the mysql.ndb_binlog_index table, which now contains two additional columns orig_server_id and orig_epoch for storing this information. In such cases, a single epoch on a slave may be represented by multiple rows in the slave's ndb_binlog_index table, one for each epoch as it originated from a master.

An insufficiently descriptive and potentially misleading Error 4006 (Connect failure - out of connection objects...) was produced when either of the following two conditions occurred:

When an NDB event was left behind but the corresponding table was later recreated and received a new table ID, the event could not be dropped. (Bug #30877)

When creating an NDB table with a column that has COLUMN_FORMAT = DYNAMIC, but the table itself uses ROW_FORMAT=FIXED, the table is considered dynamic, but any columns for which the row format is unspecified default to FIXED. Now in such cases the server issues the warning Row format FIXED incompatible with dynamic attribute column_name. (Bug #30276)

For micro-GCPs, the assignment of “fake” CGI events no longer cause buckets to be sent out of order. Now, when assigning a GCI to a non-GCI event (that is, creating a pseudo-GCI or “fake” CGI), the GCI that is to arrive is always initiated, even if no known GCI exists, which could occur in the event of a node failure. (Bug #30884)