There are a couple of posts about setting up Percona XtraDB Cluster on Vagrant and Percona Server on MySQL Sandbox – those are two of the top tools used by the Percona Support team for testing and bug processing among other things.

In this post, however, I will show you how to use Docker with Percona Server on Ubuntu 12.04.

As per Docker’s official site:

Docker is an open-source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a lightweight, portable, self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere.

Docker containers can encapsulate any payload, and will run …

The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 13.1 x86_64 (Apache2, Dovecot, ISPConfig 3)

This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 13.1 64bit (x86_64) server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable) with PHP, CGI and SSI support, Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH, TLS and virtual mail users, BIND DNS server, Pureftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, Mailman, etc. Since version 3.0.4, ISPConfig comes with full support for the nginx web server in addition to Apache; this tutorial covers the setup of a server that uses Apache, not nginx.

Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support (LEMP) On Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on an Ubuntu 14.04 server with PHP5 support (through PHP-FPM) and MySQL support (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP) .

The German Unix User Group (GUUG) will hold their annual conference "Frühjahrsfachgespräch" on September 23-26 this year (I know, not really "Frühjahr" anymore, but this is how it is).

The Call for Presentations is still open until May 31st. Talks can be proposed in German and English, and there are slots for longer tutorials as well.

The range of possible topics is broad, so if you think you have anything interesting to share with a very passionate and technical audience of sysadmins and developers, here are some suggestions:

• Operating Systems/Applications: architectures, privilege concepts, new developments, administration, mobile systems
• Relevant new OS Kernel features: new developments in Linux-, BSD- or other Spen …

The Perfect Server - Ubuntu 14.04 (nginx, BIND, MySQL, PHP, Postfix, Dovecot and ISPConfig 3)

This tutorial shows how to prepare an Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) server (with nginx, BIND, Dovecot) for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache or nginx web server, Postfix mail server, Courier or Dovecot IMAP/POP3 server, MySQL, BIND or MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more. This setup covers nginx (instead of Apache), BIND (instead of MyDNS), and Dovecot (instead of Courier).

Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Ubuntu 14.04LTS)

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses.

The Perfect Server - CentOS 6.5 x86_64 (Apache2, Dovecot, ISPConfig 3)

This tutorial shows how to prepare a CentOS 6.5 x86_64 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, BIND nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Mailman, and many more. Since version 3.0.4, ISPConfig comes with full support for the nginx web server in addition to Apache; this tutorial covers the setup of a server that uses Apache, not nginx.

While at Percona Live this year I was reminded about ZFS and running MySQL on top of a ZFS-based storage platform.

Now I’m a big fan of ZFS (although sadly I don’t get to use it as much as I used to after I shutdown my home server farm), and I did a lot of different testing back while at MySQL to ensure that MySQL, InnoDB and ZFS worked correctly together.

Of course today we have a completely new range of ZFS compatible environments, not least of which are FreeBSD and ZFS on Linux, I think it’s time to revisit some of my original advice on using this combination.

Unfortunately the presentations and MySQL University sessions back then have all been taken down. But that doesn’t mean the advice is any less valid.

Some of the core advice for using InnoDB on ZFS:

• Configure a single InnoDB tablespace, rather than configuring multiple tablespaces …

Note: This post originally appeared as a post on my former employers site (inside.godaddy.com), and has since been removed. Reposting here to share the information.

We here at GoDaddy deploy our MySQL database servers with RAID 10 for performance and reliability. Supporting that, we utilize hardware RAID option with Dell branded PERC cards. These cards offer a write back cache to boost write performance. Writes are stored in memory on the RAID controller and then flushed to disk in order to improve performance. This provides a noticeable improvement in writes because from the OS perspective, a write is complete when it hits the cache, not the actual disk. Since data in the cache is volatile, that is, susceptible to power loss, there is also a battery that allows the cache to be preserved in the event of a power loss. This eliminates the possibility of data loss while preserving the speed benefits of a write cache.

There is …

One thing that gets tedious in the IT community and Oracle community is the penchant for Windows only solutions. While Microsoft does an excellent job in certain domains, I remain a loyal Apple customer. By the way, you can install Oracle Client software on Mac OS X and run SQL Developer against any Oracle Database server. You can even run MySQL Workbench and MySQL server natively on the Mac OS X platform, which creates a robust development platform and gives you more testing options with the MySQL monitor (the client software).

Notwithstanding, some Windows users appear to malign Apple and the Mac OS X on compatibility, but they don’t understand that it’s a derivative of the Research Unix, through BSD (Berkeley Software …