ndb_desc — Describe NDB Tables | Warning | 1296 | 1 row in set (0.00 sec) The warning is issued because  READ_ONLY=1  requires that the table’s fragment count type is (or be set to)  ONE_PER_LDM_PER_NODE_GROUP ;  NDB  sets this automatically in such cases. You can check that the ALTER TABLE  statement has the desired effect using  SHOW CREATE TABLE : mysql>  SHOW CREATE TABLE fish\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Table: fish Create Table: CREATE TABLE ‘fish‘ ( ‘id‘ int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, ‘name‘ varchar(20) NOT NULL, ‘length_mm‘ int(11) NOT NULL, ‘weight_gm‘ int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (‘id‘), UNIQUE KEY ‘uk‘ (‘name‘) ) ENGINE=ndbcluster DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COMMENT=’NDB_TABLE=READ_BACKUP=1,FULLY_REPLICATED=1’ 1 row in set (0.01 sec) Because  FRAGMENT_COUNT_TYPE  was not set explicitly, its value is not shown in the comment text printed by  SHOW CREATE TABLE .  ndb_desc , however, displays the updated value for this attribute. The  Table options  column shows the binary properties just enabled. You can see this in the output shown here (emphasized text): shell>  ./ndb_desc -c localhost fish -d test -p -- fish -- Version: 4 Fragment type: HashMapPartition K Value: 6 Min load factor: 78 Max load factor: 80 Temporary table: no Number of attributes: 4 Number of primary keys: 1 Length of frm data: 380 Max Rows: 0 Row Checksum: 1 Row GCI: 1 SingleUserMode: 0 ForceVarPart: 1 PartitionCount: 1 FragmentCount: 1 FragmentCountType: ONE_PER_LDM_PER_NODE_GROUP ExtraRowGciBits: 0 ExtraRowAuthorBits: 0 TableStatus: Retrieved Table options: readbackup, fullyreplicated HashMap: DEFAULT-HASHMAP-3840-1 -- Attributes -- id Int PRIMARY KEY DISTRIBUTION KEY AT=FIXED ST=MEMORY AUTO_INCR name Varchar(20;latin1_swedish_ci) NOT NULL AT=SHORT_VAR ST=MEMORY DYNAMIC length_mm Int NOT NULL AT=FIXED ST=MEMORY DYNAMIC weight_gm Int NOT NULL AT=FIXED ST=MEMORY DYNAMIC -- Indexes -- PRIMARY KEY(id) - UniqueHashIndex PRIMARY(id) - OrderedIndex uk(name) - OrderedIndex uk$unique(name) - UniqueHashIndex -- Per partition info -- Partition Row count Commit count Frag fixed memory Frag varsized memory Extent_space NDBT_ProgramExit: 0 - OK 4300