4.3. Deploying a Fan-In Topology

The fan-in topology is the logical opposite of a master/slave topology. In a fan-in topology, the data from two masters is combined together on one slave. Fan-in topologies are often in situations where you have satellite databases, maybe for sales or retail operations, and need to combine that information together in a single database for processing.

Within the fan-in topology:

  • host1 is the master replicating to host3

  • host2 is the master replicating to host3

Figure 4.3. Topologies: Fan-in

Topologies: Fan-in

Some additional considerations need to be made when using fan-in topologies:

  • If the same tables from each each machine are being merged together, it is possible to get collisions in the data where auto increment is used. The effects can be minimized by using increment offsets within the MySQL configuration:

    auto-increment-offset = 1
    auto-increment-increment = 4
  • Fan-in can work more effectively, and be less prone to problems with the corresponding data by configuring specific tables at different sites. For example, with two sites in New York and San Jose databases and tables can be prefixed with the site name, i.e. sjc_sales and nyc_sales.

    Alternatively, a filter can be configured to rename the database sales dynamically to the corresponding location based tables. See Section 11.4.32, “Rename Filter” for more information.

  • Statement-based replication will work for most instances, but where your statements are updating data dynamically within the statement, in fan-in the information may get increased according to the name of fan-in masters. Update your configuration file to explicitly use row-based replication by adding the following to your my.cnf file:

    binlog-format = row
  • Triggers can cause problems during fan-in replication if two different statements from each master and replicated to the slave and cause the operations to be triggered multiple times. Tungsten Replicator cannot prevent triggers from executing on the concentrator host and there is no way to selectively disable triggers. Check at the trigger level whether you are executing on a master or slave. For more information, see Section A.3.1, “Triggers”.

To create the configuration the masters and services must be specified, the topology specification takes care of the actual configuration:

shell> ./tools/tpm install epsilon \
    --replication-user=tungsten \
    --replication-password=password \
    --install-directory=/opt/continuent \
    --masters=host1,host2 \
    --members=host1,host2,host3 \
    --master-services=alpha,beta \
    --topology=fan-in \


Click the icon to show a detailed description of each argument.

For additional options supported for configuration with tpm, see Chapter 10, The tpm Deployment Command.


Once the installation has been completed, the service will be started and ready to use.