We continue to improve Percona XtraBackup, and today I would like to give a preview for one feature which comes in next Percona XtraBackup 2.1 release.

This feature is “Compact backups”, and let me explain what it does.
As you may know InnoDB PK (Primary Key) contains all data, and all secondary indexes are only subset of columns of Primary Key. So in theory we can store only PK, and re-build secondary indexes as we need. Well, now it is possible not only in theory.

To create a compact backup you should use
innobackupex --compact
and it will create a backup where all InnoDB tables contain only Primary Keys and not secondary.
It allows to safe some space on a backup storage. How much? Well, it depends on how many indexes you have.
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Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.1.67-14.3 on January 23rd, 2013 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories).

Based on MySQL 5.1.67, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.1.67-14.3 is now the current stable release in the 5.1 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can be found in the 5.1.67-14.3 milestone at Launchpad.

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.5.29-29.4 on January 23rd, 2012 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories).

Based on MySQL 5.5.29, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.5.29-29.4 is now the current stable release in the 5.5 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can be found in the 5.5.29-29.4 milestone at Launchpad.

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraBackup 2.0.5 on January 23rd, 2012. Downloads are available from our download site here and Percona Software Repositories.

This release is the current GA (Generally Available) stable release in the 2.0 series.

New Features:

• New option --defaults-extra-file has been introduced. This option specifies from what extra file to read the default MySQL options before the standard defaults-file. It can be used to load the user/password combination for the dedicated backup user from a separate configuration file, to avoid storing it in the crontab or a script somewhere in the system.

Bugs Fixed:

• In case of …

Percona Server Wins Developer Week 2013 Award; Named Top Innovator in SQL Technologies Category

Percona Server has won a 2013 DeveloperWeek Best of Tech award, being named Top Innovator in the SQL Technologies category!

We’re proud to accept this award, which is determined by a combination of peer voting and review from an independent panel of judges. Thank you to everyone who voted for Percona Server!

From our press release: According to a 451 Research report titled, “MySQL vs. NoSQL and NewSQL: 2011-2015,” Percona …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.1.66-14.2 on January 15th, 2013 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories).

Based on MySQL 5.1.66, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.1.66-14.2 is now the current stable release in the 5.1 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can be found in the 5.1.66-14.2 milestone at Launchpad.

New Features:

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In preparing Percona Server 5.5.29 (not yet released, but soon), I filed MySQL bug 68045 (is marked private as it’s a security bug). This bug is in relation to the Oracle fix for CVE-2012-4414 and a problem I found with it. The MariaDB fix (which we incorporated into Percona Server 5.5.28-29.3) is not affected.

When the MariaDB team fixed CVE-2012-4414 they created a test case named rpl_mdev382.test which can be …

Percona Toolkit 2.1.8

Percona Toolkit 2.1.8 was released today and the new version comes with some pretty cool news: Beta support for MySQL 5.6 (which as you might know is also in beta).

In addition to various bug fixes, Percona Toolkit 2.1.8 also offers beta support for Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC). Version 2.1.8 continues the trend of solid bug fix releases, and all 2.1 users are encouraged to upgrade.

You can download Percona Toolkit 2.1.8 here.  (More info on Percona Toolkit). Users who plan on running the tools on Percona XtraDB Cluster or MySQL 5.6 are advised to upgrade. …

pt-stalk recipes: Gather forensic data about MySQL when a server problem occurs

It happens to us all from time to time: a server issue arises that leaves you scratching your head. That’s when Percona Toolkit’s pt-stalk comes into play, helping you diagnose the problem by capturing diagnostic data that helps you pinpoint what’s causing the havoc hitting your database.

From the documentation (http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-toolkit/pt-stalk.html):

pt-stalk watches for a trigger condition to become true, and then collects data to help in diagnosing problems. It is designed to run as a daemon with root privileges, so that you can diagnose intermittent problems that you cannot observe directly. You can also use it to execute a custom command, or to gather the data on demand without waiting for the trigger to happen. …

How easy is it to identify and debug Percona XtraDB Cluster replication problem ?

If you are using PXC, you may have already seen in your datadirectory several log files starting with GRA_

Those files correspond to a replication failure. That means the slave thread was not able to apply one transaction. For each of those file, a corresponding warning or error message is present in the mysql error log file.

Those error can also be false positive like a bad DDL statement (DROP a table that doesn’t exists for example) and therefore nothing to worry about. However it’s always recommended to understand what’s is happening.

As the GRA files contain binlog events in ROW format representing the failed transaction this post explains how to proceed.

The first step to be able to analyze your GRA files is to add a binlog header to the file.
You can download one here : …