Thanks for the reply sappenin. The latest topology for a MySQL cluster is a synchronous cluster where the mysqld SQL server is sitting on top of a clustered db engine which is spread across many machines. There is no master or backups. They are equal. This means each node can be used rather than just sitting and waiting for another to fail. So ip takeover is not the answer since wouldn't allow usage of all db nodes. Loadbalancer would work, yes, but getting too complex for a "simple" email instalation since requires 3 layers of hardware just to store an email. What makes sense to me, as a simple solution, is that each JBMS server can use a particluar db node. But then there is the issue as posted of what happens to JBMS when it's db node goes down? There is still at least one more db running on another ip. JBMS just needs to start using a different one. As you mention, if JBMS could manage a pool of connections to different databases in the db farm that would be nice. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3959643#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...