MySQL plays a critical role in OpenStack. It serves as the host database supporting most components such as Nova, Glance, and Keystone and is the most mature guest database in Trove. Many OpenStack operators use Percona open source software including the MySQL drop-in compatible Percona Server and Galera-based Percona XtraDB Cluster as well as tools such as Percona XtraBackup and Percona Toolkit. We see a need in the community to understand how to improve MySQL performance …

In the first post in a series on MariaDB features we find interesting, we begin with selectively skipping replication of binlog events. This feature is available on MariaDB 5.5 and 10.

By default when using MySQL’s standard replication, all events are logged in the binary log and those binary log events are replicated to all slaves (it’s possible to filter out some schema). But with this feature, it’s also possible to bypass some events to be replicated on the slave(s) even if they are written in the binary log. Having those event in the binary logs is always useful for point-in-time recovery.

Indeed, usually when we need to not replicate an event, we set sql_log_bin = 0 and the event is bypassed: neither …

Percona Server version 5.1.73-14.12

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.1.73-14.12 on July 31st, 2014 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories). Based on MySQL 5.1.73, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.1.73-14.12 is now the current stable release in the 5.1 series. All of Percona‘s software is …

Today, I was reminded of a Jim Starkey quote on the Random Query Generator:

“The Colonoscopy of Database Software”
– Jim Starkey

If your project does not have something that you can adapt that quote to, odds are your testing is inadequate.

As we know different storage engines in MySQL have different file structures. Every table in MySQL 5.6 must have a .frm file in the database directory matching the table name. But where the rest of the data resides depends on the storage engine.

For MyISAM we have .MYI and .MYD files in the database directory (unless special settings are in place); for InnoDB we might have data stored in the single table space (typically ibdata1 in the database directory) or as file per table (or better said file per partition) producing a single file with .ibd extension for each table/partition. TokuDB as of this version (7.1.7) has its own innovative approach to storing the table contents.

I have created the table in the database test having the following structure:

CREATE TABLE `mytable` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `c` varchar(15) NOT NULL, …

One of the common causes of downtime with MySQL is running out of connections. Have you ever seen this error? “ERROR 1040 (00000): Too many connections.” If you’re working with MySQL long enough you surely have. This is quite a nasty error as it might cause complete downtime… transient errors with successful transactions mixed with failing ones as well as only some processes stopping to run properly causing various kinds of effects if not monitored properly.

There are number of causes for running out of connections, the most common ones involving when the Web/App server is creating unexpectedly large numbers of connections due to a miss-configuration or some script/application leaking connections or creating too many connections in error.

The solution I see some people employ is just to increase max_connections to some very high number so MySQL “never” runs out of connections. This however can cause …

I recently hosted hosting a webinar which explained what MySQL Clusrter is, what it can deliver and what the latest developments were. The “Discover the latest MySQL Cluster Developments” webinar is now available to view here. At the end of this article you’ll find a full transcript of the Q&A from the live session.

Details:

View this webinar to learn how MySQL Cluster 7.3, the latest GA release, enables developer agility by making it far simpler and faster to build your products and web-based applications with MySQL Cluster. You’ll also learn how MySQL Cluster and its linear scalability, 99.999% uptime, real-time responsiveness, and ability to perform over 1 BILLION Writes per Minute can …

XA transactions are an open standard for distributed transactions. A distributed or global transaction can spawn multiple databases. XA transactions come handy, for example, when data sets are sharded over multiple servers and a business transaction affects multiple shards. The free MySQL Fabric tools help to setup and manage a sharded MySQL cluster. The development version of PECL/mysqlnd_ms 1.6 helps with XA transactions. It abstracts SQL details and acts as a transaction manager. The PHP MySQL driver kicks in when things go wrong and XA transactions show their nasty side: blocked servers. Good news: this is a rare case. Bad news: a deep dive …

Using GTID to attach an asynchronous Slave sounds promising. Lets have a look at the two existing GTID implementations and their integration with Galera.

GTID@MariaDB

There is one GTID used by the cluster and every node increments the common seqno by itself. This works well as long all transactions are replicated by Galera (simplified InnoDB). Because Galera takes care of the Commit Order of the transactions on all nodes. So having identical GTID/seqno from the start there are no problems.

  node1> show global variables like 'gtid_binlog_pos';
  +-----------------+---------+
  | Variable_name   | Value   |
  +-----------------+---------+
  | gtid_binlog_pos | 0-1-504 |
  +-----------------+---------+

  node2> show global variables like 'gtid_binlog_pos';
  +-----------------+---------+
  | Variable_name   | Value   |
  +-----------------+---------+
  | gtid_binlog_pos | 0-1-504 | …

Galera the synchronous Master-Master replication is quite popular. It is used by Percona XtraDB Cluster, MariaDB Galera Cluster and even patched MySQL binaries exist. Quite often you want to add a slave to a Galera Cluster. This is going to work quite well. All you need is at least configure log_bin, log_slave_updates and server_id on the designated Masters and attach your Slave.

GTID@MariaDB

Even you can use traditional (non GTID) replication. Using non GTID replication is a hassle. As you need to search for the right offset on the new Master to attach your Slave on.

Using GTID promises to be easier. As you simply switch to the new Master and the replication framework finds the new position based on the GTiD automatically.

As a fact we have two GTID implementations

• GTID@MySQL/Percona
• GTID@MariaDB

…