EC2 is nifty, but it doesn’t appear suitable for all needs, and that’s what this post is about.

For instance, a machine can just “disappear”. You can set things up to automatically start a new instance to replace it, but if you just committed a transaction it’s likely to be lost: MySQL replication is asynchronous, EBS which is slower if you commit your transactions on it, or EBS snapshots which are only periodic (you’d have to add foo on the application end). This adds complexity, and thus the question arises whether EC2 is the best solution for systems where this is a concern.

When pondering this, there are two important factors to consider: a database server needs cores, RAM and reasonably low-latency disk access, and application servers should be near their database server. This means you shouldn’t split app and db servers to different hosting/cloud providers.

We’d like to hear your thoughts on EC2 …

In a comment to my prior post , Roland Bouman raised the issue mixed messages inherent in the dual-licensing model of open source. There is more context to his comment, but he says: "I am all for commercial open source. I am just curious how you feel you can logically defend both ‘take us we’re open and free’ and ‘take us we offer quality paid for extras’."

There are many articles written on the topic of free open source and hybrid models, so in the words of Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride: "… let me ’splain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up."

Open Source Software (OSS) is a …

In a comment to my prior post , Roland Bouman raised the issue mixed messages inherent in the dual-licensing model of open source. There is more context to his comment, but he says: "I am all for commercial open source. I am just curious how you feel you can logically defend both ‘take us we’re open and free’ and ‘take us we offer quality paid for extras’."

There are many articles written on the topic of free open source and hybrid models, so in the words of Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride: "… let me ’splain. No, there’s too much. Let me sum up."

Open Source Software (OSS) is a …

Seen in #maatkit on Freenode:

I never realized just how terrible recovering MyISAM from a crash can be

Sad but true — it can be pretty painful. This is one of the reasons I pretty much recommend InnoDB (okay, okay, XtraDB) for most data unless it’s read-only.

Related posts:

1. Hindsight on a scalable replacement for InnoDB A while ag
2. What is the scalable replacement for InnoDB? A while ba
3. Xtrabackup is for InnoDB tables too, not just XtraDB Just thoug

Related posts brought to you by …

Yves pointed this out to me:

http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3825426/

“Moving beyond just providing Oracle compatibility, EnterpriseDB is adding new scalability features to their database. One of them is a feature called ‘”Infinite Cache,” which is based on the open source memcached application.

Mlodgenski commented that distributed memory caches are common, though management from a system management and a database perspective is often difficult.

“What we did is we took the distributed memory cache that was sitting in front of the database and put it behind the database,” Mlodgenski said. “This allows a simple SQL (define) interface for developers that allows access to the distributed memory cache and now the system management overhead is handed by the database itself.”

Mlodgenski added that Infinite Cache leads to a 10x to 20x performance gain for read application loads. …

After some discussions which happened on mailing list lately, I decided that server: database repository can use some more adjustments. Some people complained about changes I introduced with MySQL 5.1. One point of view is that using factory version on production server is a bad idea but on the other hand, where would you get something newer for your old openSUSE to let it survive a little bit longer before upgrade to newer version? I'd like to introduce following repository scheme which should solve these problems...

server: database: STABLE

This repository will contain last officially released version of some server database related packages. Purpose of this repository will be mainly to provide new stable packages to users of …

I don’t remember having to do this before, but I had compiled MySQL 5.1.34 recently on my dev box (os x) and I saw a warning on a create table statement. It turns out InnoDB was not enabled (or even listed in the list of storage engines.

Before:

mysql> show engines;
+————+———+———————————————————–+————–+——+————+
| Engine | Support | Comment | Transactions | XA | Savepoints |
+————+———+———————————————————–+————–+——+————+
| CSV | YES | CSV storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| MRG_MYISAM | YES | Collection of identical MyISAM tables | NO | NO | NO |
| MEMORY | YES | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables | NO | NO | NO |
| MyISAM | DEFAULT | Default engine as of MySQL 3.23 with great performance | NO | NO | NO |
…

Today marks the official launch of Percona.tv. We'll be uploading technical screencasts, conference video, and anything else cool we can think up. If you've got ideas or requests, let us know and we'll do our best to accommodate!

Entry posted by Ryan Lowe | 7 comments

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The PHP BBQ tourcontinues. Come to one of the four remaining barbecues in Berlin (today, 18:00-23:00 CEST, Cafe Schönbrunn, note the prominent attendees listed on the wiki!), Dortmund (Friday), Hamburg (Saturday) and Kiel (Sunday). All three past evenings in Munich, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe have been quite similar in the way that most enjoyed meeting each other at the relaxed athmosphere of a BBQ. At Karlsruhe it has been a true summer night with temperatures beyond 20 degree celsius and glowflies!

I have been most impressed about those who had a travel time of an …

The PHP BBQ tourcontinues. Come to one of the four remaining barbecues in Berlin (today, 18:00-23:00 CEST, Cafe Schönbrunn, note the prominent attendees listed on the wiki!), Dortmund (Friday), Hamburg (Saturday) and Kiel (Sunday). All three past evenings in Munich, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe have been quite similar in the way that most enjoyed meeting each other at the relaxed athmosphere of a BBQ. At Karlsruhe it has been a true summer night with temperatures beyond 20 degree celsius and glowflies!

I have been most impressed about those who had a travel time of an …