Continuent upgrades MySQL clustering tool

Signals a major shift in strategy towards an open-source development model.

Database availability specialist Continuent has announced details of a new version of its M/cluster tool for clustering the popular open-source MySQL database, plus new venture capital funding and a major shift in strategy towards an open-source development model.

Continuent's chief executive, Eero Teerikorpi, said, "Our database virtualisation tools take two or more databases and join them together so they act as one. We also provide load balancing and multi-path failover services." He added that the open-source version of the tools can be used to provide this functionality for a wide range of databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and PostgreSQL.

"Around 80 to 90 percent of our code-base is now open source. The open-source core is a fully functional solution but uses JDBC [Java Database Connector] so is database generic. There are many firms using the open-source offering in production today. But we have a small amount of proprietary code, which enhances the functionality and tunes it to a particular database, such as Microsoft SQL Server."

Teerikorpi added that upgrades to P/cluster for PostgreSQL will follow early next year, and upgrades for Continuent's Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase products will arrive before next summer.

Continuent software is priced at £2,795 + VAT per database CPU for a perpetual licence, with dual-core chips priced as a single processor. Maintenance fees are around 10 to 25 percent of this price annually. Teerikorpi added that Continuent may in future move to a subscription model for pricing virtualised server instances.