Recently I had some time to do some clenaups/changes/updates in server:database repo regarding MySQL (and MariaDB). Nothing too big. Well actually, there are few little things that I want to talk about and that is the reason for this blog post, but still, nothing really important…

MySQL 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7

MySQL 5.6 is stable for some time already, so it’s time to put it in the action. So I sent the request to include it in Factory and therefore in openSUSE 13.1. There is off course a list of interesting stuff you might want to take a look at before you update. If you don’t want to update, you can install mysql-community-server_55 from …

Towards the end of last year, I was asked to investigate the Red Hat Software Collections by someone that popped by one of my talks. SkySQL has been working heavily with Red Hat, and with Fedora 19 shipping MariaDB as a default, it seems like MariaDB is getting even more distribution. The Red Hat Software Collections 1.0 Beta is now available for users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

From a database standpoint, users now get MariaDB 5.5. I encourage all to try it, as it is an in-situ upgrade. It is described as:

MariaDB version 5.5, which introduces an easy-to-adopt alternative for MySQL for Red Hat Enterprise …

When looking at high availability for any CMS, and particularly for Drupal, the list of contenders for part or all of the solution is growing and can be daunting. We'll take a look at the various parts of a solution and what options we have.

Go Cloud?

It seems nearly every answer to every problem in IT these days is "The Cloud", but is it?

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When looking at high availability for any CMS, and particularly for Drupal, the list of contenders for part or all of the solution is growing and can be daunting. We'll take a look at the various parts of a solution and what options we have.

Go Cloud?

It seems nearly every answer to every problem in IT these days is "The Cloud", but is it?

read more

Engine condition pushdown is a MySQL internal mechanism that is intended to avoid to send non matching rows from the storage engine to the SQL layer. This is very important when the storage engine involves traffic over the network. This mechanism was initially created to optimize MySQL Cluster (NDB) behavior. For the NDB storage engine [...]

It’s been written about everywhere, but since we keep spotting installations in the wild where people don’t know about it, it probably deserves another mention.

By default, Linux uses the atime option on a disk mount, which means it writes a timestamp (e.g. a write to the drive) every time it reads anything. So in this case, reads cause writes – and also disk seeks, because a read from a file will then trigger having to write to the directory that contains the file. This even occurs if a file is read from the file system’s page cache (reading from the machine’s memory rather than the drive).

Unless you require an audit trail of users reading files, you generally you don’t want this. Thus, you want to add the noatime option to the disk mount in /etc/fstab. If you have just the defaults in there, you just make it defaults,noatime. It’ll doesn’t necesarily require a reboot as you …

In my prior post on the problems with open source, I wrote that one issue that impacts open source revenues is the macro economy, and how a declining or difficult macro economy can result in reduction of revenues to open source companies. The following article talks about how financially troubled Spain is saving a "fortune" by moving to open source. The Spanish government's savings are coming at the expense of proprietary server software companies--most likely Microsoft--but I would be willing to bet that none of this "savings" is flowing to the open source vendors. That is what happens in a difficult macro economy.

In my prior post on the problems with open source, I wrote that one issue that impacts open source revenues is the macro economy, and how a declining or difficult macro economy can result in reduction of revenues to open source companies. The following article talks about how financially troubled Spain is saving a “fortune” by moving to open source. The Spanish government’s savings are coming at the expense of proprietary server software companies–most likely Microsoft–but I would be willing to bet that none of this “savings” is flowing to the open source vendors. That is what happens in a difficult macro economy.

The post Problems with Open …

I have never been to a DrupalCon before so my first was DrupalCon Portland 2013 (with some 3,500+ attendees). My first DrupalCon happened to also be one that I spoke at, and I hope to return to Austin in 2014 (added bonus: I’ve never been to Texas before).

SkySQL had decided to get a booth at DrupalCon since I was speaking and I have to say that the booth was very successful. You may ask why and the simple reasons are:

1. Everyone at DrupalCon was a user of MySQL. Once they hit scale, they may need professional services or even just switch to MariaDB. This is a captive audience.
2. Everyone running Drupal at scale with many modules and nodes generally faced issues with database slowdowns. Hello …

Lately more people ask me for comparisons between Percona Server & MariaDB. There isn’t a definitive blow-by-blow feature comparison yet, but it’ll come soon.

All that said, its great to see new features from MariaDB make it into Percona Server. The features that I’ve managed to track: group commit for the binary log, threadpool and atomic write support for Fusion-io devices.

It started with the group commit for the binary log feature in Percona Server 5.5.18-23.0 ( …