In traditional MySQL replication, a master MySQL server updates one or more slaves. Transactions are committed sequentially, and a slow transaction can cause the slave to lag behind the master. This means that if the master fails, it is possible that the slave might not have recorded the last few transactions. If a transaction-safe engine such as InnoDB is being used, a transaction will either be complete on the slave or not applied at all, but replication does not guarantee that all data on the master and the slave will be consistent at all times. In MySQL Cluster, all data nodes are kept in synchrony, and a transaction committed by any one data node is committed for all data nodes. In the event of a data node failure, all remaining data nodes remain in a consistent state.
In short, whereas standard MySQL replication is asynchronous, MySQL Cluster is synchronous.
We have implemented (asynchronous) replication for Cluster in MySQL 5.1 and later. MySQL Cluster Replication (also sometimes known as “geo-replication”) includes the capability to replicate both between two MySQL Clusters, and from a MySQL Cluster to a non-Cluster MySQL server. However, we do not plan to backport this functionality to MySQL 5.1. See Section 17.6, “MySQL Cluster Replication”.
In short, whereas standard MySQL replication is asynchronous, MySQL Cluster is synchronous.
We have implemented (asynchronous) replication for Cluster in MySQL 5.1 and later. MySQL Cluster Replication (also sometimes known as “geo-replication”) includes the capability to replicate both between two MySQL Clusters, and from a MySQL Cluster to a non-Cluster MySQL server. However, we do not plan to backport this functionality to MySQL 5.1. See Section 17.6, “MySQL Cluster Replication”.