John Quinn writes about Scaling Drupal he is taking a one step at a time approach and is still writing his 4th and 5 stages.

His first step obviously is separating the drupal from a separate database server, and he chooses mysql for this purpose, moving your DB to a different machine is a good thing to do.

However then he gets this crazy idea of using NFS to share his his drupal shared files :(
(he even dares to mention that the setup ease is good) Folks, we abandonned NFS in the late nineties. NFS is still a recipe for disaster, it has performance issues , it as stability issues (stale locks), and no security admin in his right mind will tolerate portmap to be running in his DMZ.
(Also think about the IO path that …

First of all: Thank you for your positive feedback on the MySQL 5.1 Errata Sheet!

While I never doubted that publishing the 5.1 Errata Sheet was the right thing to do, I had expected a more mixed feedback. It turned out the feedback was very grateful. So thank you for your encouragement

• Kevin Burton for commenting in Jay’s blog
  

  “This was a big win guys. Good work.We were going to deploy 5.1.x in out or production slave configurations just to test the reliability but this give us a lot more confidence in this release.”

• Baron Schwartz for commenting in …

DPM homepage

http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/rel/dpm-r4.tar.gz - tarball of r4
git clone http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/dpm.git - to get the latest code, always
http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/dpm-export.tar.gz - a tarball of the latest code, for those unwilling to git it.

It's been a long time. I suck. One of these days I'll be productive enough to pop out releases.

Unfortunately I've been sitting on this one for a long time. There are significant API updates in this one, but I've cut it just short of being really good. Impatient :)

Notable API changes:

- All …

DPM homepage

http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/rel/dpm-r4.tar.gz - tarball of r4
git clone http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/dpm.git - to get the latest code, always
http://consoleninja.net/code/dpm/dpm-export.tar.gz - a tarball of the latest code, for those unwilling to git it.

It's been a long time. I suck. One of these days I'll be productive enough to pop out releases.

Unfortunately I've been sitting on this one for a long time. There are significant API updates in this one, but I've cut it just short of being really good. Impatient :)

Notable API changes:

- All …

In Part 1 we have seen how the concept of state management works. Now it's time to apply that concept to a load-balancer. In this Part 2 we will look at a strategy for using Linux Virtual Server with MPP for failover, and also take a closer look at the mechanics of MPP itself.

I've written a few articles on disruption over at my brother's site www.ondisruption.com.  While most people think about disruption only from a technical point of view, you can find disruption across many areas, whether it's the business model, development approach, distribution etc. I've also written a couple of pieces about how disruption can impact your career and what to do about it.

At any rate, here are the links:

• Heineken: Disrupting a Commodity Business
• Are You a Sitting Duck?
• Should You Pack a Parachute?
• …

It’s been a while since I’ve written about progress on the book. I actually stopped working on it as much at the beginning of the month, because on October 31st I managed to finish a first draft of the last big chapter (Scaling and High Availability)! Now I’m back to full-time work at my employer, and I’m working on the book in the evenings and weekends only. This doesn’t mean the book is close to being done, though.

greg knauss wrote ?wide vs. deep? to explain why he is not happy being management, and what he thinks the difference is between people well-suited to management and those that are not.

i don?t know if i agree with his explanation, but i think it is very important for organizations to realize that there cannot be only one career path that leads up through management. to mysql?s credit, the recent work that was done to standardize our job titles and the path up the ranks acknowledges this, and there is a non-management path for developers. i don?t think we are quite where we need to be in terms of divorcing technical leadership from resource management, but we are getting there.

and mysql is hiring for all sorts of positions.

The MySQL Table Checksum, part of the MySQL Toolkit (having to be renamed soon) is an invaluable community tool for use with MySQL. Most sites or installations of any volume will use MySQL Replication for one purpose or another, be it for read scalability, backups, testing, upgrading etc.

Why is it needed?
There are two primary compelling reasons. First, MySQL replication is an asynchronous process and there is no absolute guarantee that the Master Database and the Slave Database are the same (By definition that can be different). Second, MySQL does not provide any tools relating to checking, managing, reporting differences. Luckily the community has addressed this present lack of product feature in current …