Replication is an excellent way to protect data and ensure uninterrupted service. For systems administrators who know the basics of MySQL, this book can help them to learn about MySQL Replication and assist them in keeping replication running or to get it running again when it inevitably stops. Despite its moderate size, this book contains a great deal. It contains three parts, as well as some very useful appendices: Part I lays out the replication process and how to prepare a server for replication. Understanding the process is essential to solving problems. Part II presents the steps for initializing a slave server and then shown how to start replication and make sure it's running. Part II covers on-going administration related to replication servers. This includes making backups of databases and how to restore them, smoothly. The last chapter covers the basics of load balancing methods. The reference information in the appendices will be one of the reasons to keep this book handy for a long time: Appendix A provides explanations and examples of the MySQL functions related to replication. Appendix B explains the MySQL replication states, the primary clues when replication fails and won't restart. Appendix C lists the options for mysqld related to replication and information on setting them well, and covers a few other command-line utilities that are invariably used in replication.
As author of this book, I would like to admit that it's out-of-date in many ways. I probably should remove it from print. However, many people have told me that it helped them to understand MySQL replication better than any other book.
I spent a lot of time when I worked for MySQL Ab., asking questions of the engineers that created MySQL replication. There were many aspects that were not apparent and we spoke plenty as I was researching and testing the software for writing this book.
It doesn't cost much, and some still find the basics and the fundamentals of it useful. So for now it's still available.