Recently we put together a consolidation benchmark to see how an open-source stack performs against the proprietary stack from Microsoft. Solaris, MySQL, and Sun Web Server running on the open-source UltraSPARC T2 processor were pitted against a Microsoft SW stack running on a 4-socket QC Xeon server. This benchmark highlights the continued trend to incorporate MySQL open-source databases and how it works under virtualization (Solaris Zones).

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1.4 Ghz UltraSPARC T2 processor) and Solaris Containers managing a consolidation of Open-Source Software components (MySQL Database and Sun Java System Web Server) provided 2.4 times better performance than the HP DL580 system (four Xeon quad-core processors) and a major virtualization software, Microsoft Windows 2003 Server EE, Microsoft SQLserver database and Microsoft IIS webserver.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 using the MySQL database in Solaris zones is …

While I ducked out of Giuseppe’s miniconf talk, on MySQL Proxy (a great session, might I add - it takes up 2 slots right up until lunch), I went over to the LinuxChix miniconf, to attend a talk about memcache, by Brenda Wallace. Brenda, works at Catalyst IT, in New Zealand - they use a lot of memcache, in the telco business.

Memcache: volatile cache for keeping data in. Its a daemon. The code, can connect to memcache, put values in, read values, delete values. An example of how to use memcache, is given in PHP5.

A killer feature, is the setting of expiry. You can tell it to cache for 30 seconds, and then forget about it, no worries there.

What do you store? Database, generated content (front page of a website, just like a blog even), web service lookups (useful in telco, or …

On November 17 2007, I went to the inaugural WordCamp Melbourne. It was a truly interesting event - crowded, filled to the brim, and held at the pretty amazing Watermark Bar, in Docklands. It was a really warm day, and the only complaint would be that Watermark put is in a glass dome, with only 2 fans and no air-conditioning - nice, greenhouse we were in! Food and drink were good, as were the talks in general. I took some notes, and am placing them online now (late, but better than never). Note that the event was sold out - so kudos to James Farmer for organising it.

Making money with Wordpress - Darren Rowse

- exclusive content, for a paid area (like forums?)
- textlinkads/paid links/paid reviews - nasties from Google, so this can be an …

I must be moving to another shard, having outgrown my current one. Its a manual operation.

Flickr tells me they’re moving my stuff around Incidentally, I can’t sign out. Or view the main page. Or any of the groups I’m subscribed to. Its completely locked. But it does take under-15 minutes… (at least for the load I have - ~11,500 images).

Update: Read John Allspaw’s comments at the HighScalability link to this blog post. He’s in-charge of operations, and an all round nice guy, and great presenter.

Technorati Tags: flickr, …

I think anyone into databases, Linux and so on (i.e. the LAMP stack), will benefit from the High Scalability website. Heck, any web developer will. Its well tagged (say, you’re into mysql or memcached), has a lot of content, and links to other sites that it gets its summaries/information from. Useful resource for all those into scalability (not necessarily high performance).

Incidentally, I see information about bdb (in the forums), but where are all the reports about highly scaling sites running postgresql? It’d be interesting to read, and catalogue, I think

Technorati Tags: …

While it would seem that using Mugshot is for core Linux geeks (it runs on Windows too, you know), I’ve not seen much adoption of the MySQL Mugshot Group, that was announced back in February. I’ve always enjoyed getting the Mugshot client running on my desktop informing me of new RSS feeds in Planet MySQL, so I can read new blog entries relatively quickly.

A new notification method has come upon us - its Twitter. When all is hunky dory, you get IMs or SMSes the moment a post is made from someone you’re following. So I give you the Twitter Planet …

The great Internet is littered with some really useful MySQL-related articles, that I think you’ll enjoy reading just as much as I did.

• I’ve not given Google Gears too much of a look yet, but its definitely interesting and the tutorials at O’Reilly’s ONLamp site help one play with it: The Power of Google Gears (Part 1) and The Power of Google Gears (Part 2). Looks like the series is complete, and Part 2 concentrates on using Gears for offline data entry, then syncing it with a MySQL server once the application is online. Looks like the future of desktop software might end up being like this…
• While browsing a magazine store, I picked up the SysAdmin magazine that was months …

In the mid-90s, at the very starting edge of the dotcom boom, I was the lead tech guy behind a project, we put a nationwide yellow pages database on the web, ypol.com.

At the time, nobody else had done it, but we were sure that many other people had had the same idea. And since it's rare for someone to care about finding a plumber or locksmith in another state in the middle of the night, of course I had location based searches from the start.

It was, in fact, my first real encounter with using Oracle, Sybase, and using Perl to interface to a DB. (This was before Perl5, so there was no DBI module, so it was all oraperl.)


It looks like someone has actually patented the idea of location based searches on a online yellow pages database, has put together an investor-based lawsuit machine, and has fired the first salvo by suing Verizon.

I'm pretty damn sure my old YPOL project is prior …

This thought has been floating around my head for quite some time now and I finally bit the bullet and released it from the draft state it had been sitting in for too long: there are quite many similarities between Open Source Software (OSS) projects and most of today's popular Web 2.0 sites, but there is also one odd difference that I wonder about.

For both worlds, the concept of collaboration, participation and giving more power to their users is a key component. OSS projects need contributors for patches and bug reports, but also for feedback, translations, artwork, advocacy in order to be popular and healthy. The project's developers need to be open for suggestions, listening to their user base on where the project should be heading. They also usually strive for open standards …

It was long overdue, but now it has happened: Planet MySQL now provides a section to aggregate french blogs about MySQL! Thanks a lot to Jay for updating the code and Pascal Borghino for the localization. If you are a MySQL enthusiast located in France (or any other french-speaking country) and you enjoy writing about your passion in your native language, submit your feed now!