XtraBackup is an Open Source online (non-blockable) backup solution for the InnoDB and XtraDB storage engines. It works with both MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 (and possibly 5.4 as well) and is distributed under the GPLv2.

Some weeks ago Vadim announced the availability of xtrabackup-0.7, stating that they consider it stable enough now to label this version a "Release Candidate". I've been maintaining RPM packages of xtrabackup on the fine openSUSE Build Service for quite some time now, RPMs of 0.7 for a number of distributions are now …

The OpenSQL Camp 2009 web site is now ready for business, I've updated various pages and added some more information about the call for papers. I've also set up a Twitter account (no way without one nowadays, right?), which might also play an important role in the voting/rating of talks later on (Giuseppe came up with an interesting proposal for that).

So we're now seeking your input! Let me quote from the web pages directly:

OpenSQL Camp is a free conference of, by, and for the open-source database community of users and developers. The first OpenSQLCamp 2008 took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, …

Today I received a confirmation that I will be giving a talk about "Working for a virtual company" in the main conference track of the Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) in St. Augustin, Germany (August 22nd+23rd). Yay! I've been giving talks at every FrOSCon since its inception in 2006, so I am happy that I will be able to continue this tradition. FrOSCon is really a gem among the various Linux and Open Source Conferences in Germany — it takes place at a nice venue, the weather is usually warm and sunny and the conference organization is just great. And they of course always have a good lineup of speakers and OSS projects! As for the last years we (Sun/MySQL) will support the event by sponsoring and we will likely have a booth there as well. My colleague Joerg Moellenkamp also …

For any production MySQL Database system, running RAID is a given these days. Do you know what RAID your database is? Are you sure?. Ask for quantifiable reproducible output from your systems provider or your System Administrator.

As a consultant I don’t always know the specific tools for the clients deployed H/W, but I ask the question. On more the one occasion the actual result differed from the clients’ perspective or what they were told, and twice I’ve discovered that clients when asked if their RAID was running in a degraded mode, it actually was and they didn’t know.

You can read about various benchmarks at MySQL blogs such as BigDBAHead and MySQL Performance Blog however getting first hand experience of your actually RAID …

OSCON moves this year from Portland to San Jose.

As one the community panel for Drizzle: Status, Principles, and Ecosystem I also have a speaker discount which you can combine with O’Reilly having also extended early bird registration until June 23.

Be sure to add the os09fos code for an additional 20% off, and be sure to shout me a drink there.

ScienceLogic embeds MySQL in its EM7 network management appliances. An installation of EM7 can perform over half a billion database queries daily, storing massive amounts of data for both real-time and trended performance reporting.

Michael McFadden, senior software architect with ScienceLogic, will discuss all this in an upcoming MySQL webinar.

ScienceLogic embeds MySQL in its EM7 network management appliances. An installation of EM7 can perform over half a billion database queries daily, storing massive amounts of data for both real-time and trended performance reporting.

Michael McFadden, senior software architect with ScienceLogic, will discuss all this in an upcoming MySQL webinar.

ScienceLogic embeds MySQL in its EM7 network management appliances. An installation of EM7 can perform over half a billion database queries daily, storing massive amounts of data for both real-time and trended performance reporting.

Michael McFadden, senior software architect with ScienceLogic, will discuss all this in an upcoming MySQL webinar.

If you had to configure a Wordpress MU installation without access to any details of your MySQL Configuration, what would you do?

What top five configuration settings would you use?

I asked the community this question, see For MySQL DBA fame and glory. Prize included and a number of brave soles responded for a chance to win a free copy of MySQL Administrators Bible by MySQL Community She-BA Sheeri Cabral.

There is no perfect answer and of course you would want to set more then five options, however the purpose of the competition was to seek what people would do with limited information and a limited choice of …

Update 8 June 2009
Be sure you to check out some of my research including Understanding your RAID Configuration and Understanding PERC RAID Controllers.

Last week I got caught thinking a MySQL production system wasn’t configured with RAID when it actually was. The following is the Linux dmesg output of 3 different client MySQL servers, where the H/W is all the same, a Dell 2950.

In the first two cases you will see individual references to the internal disks, however in the third you do not. This threw me, but as Matt Yonkovit correctly pointed out to me, the sizes are not standard drive sizes. …