We remember when we first started auditing MySQL servers, there were very few tools available.  In one of our early big gigs, we were battling serious performance issues for a client.  At the time, tuning-primer.sh was about the only tool available that could be used to diagnose performance bottlenecks.  Fortunately, with a lot of manual interpolation of the raw data it presented, we were able to find the issue with the server and suggest how to resolve them.  For that we are very thankful.  It was a first step in analyzing MySQL status variables, minimizing the number of formulas to learn and calculate by hand.  Obviously doing it by hand takes forever!

Now fast-forward to today.  Unfortunately, not much has changed.  Many DBAs and developers are still using open source tools such as tuning-primer, mysqltuner.pl, mysqlreport, and so on.  Don’t get the wrong; those tools have …

With Galera (Percona Cluster or MariaDB Cluster), it is sometimes advisable to not route traffic to a node during a backup due to the node already being under a heavier load.  In these situations, it may be wise to not route traffic there until the backup is complete.

Since the default /usr/bin/clustercheck script did not have the option of doing this, we created a modified version.  The below script looks for the presence of the xtrabackup tool running in the process list.  If it is found, the clustercheck script returns the appropriate exit code (502) which signals the load balancer to not route traffic its way.  The script could easily be modified to look for the presence of programs/tools in the process list.

We hope others will find it useful.

#!/bin/bash
# clustercheck.sh
#
# Script to make a proxy (ie HAProxy) capable of monitoring Percona XtraDB Cluster nodes properly
#
# Modified by Itchy …

Last week, 21-23 September, it took place the European MySQL Conference, or “Data performance Conference” as this year’s subtitle was “MySQL. NoSQL. Data in the cloud.”. This year, it changed its location from London to Amsterdam and, as most people I talked to agreed, the change was for good. As every year, Percona was the company organizing it, but it had the participation of all the major players in the open source MySQL/MongoDB/Cloud data world. Special mention goes to Booking.com, which had more …

Intro

The purpose of this project was to measure the potential overhead of VividCortex Agent, which is used by VividCortex.com database monitoring system. This benchmark is part of a consulting engagement with VividCortex and paid by the customer.

The assumption is that VividCortex agent uses CPU processing time, and we should see an impact on user queries when the workload is CPU-intensive (how much is to be measured). The impact on IO-bound should be small or insignificant.

Workload Description
For this, we use LinkBenchX benchmark in a combination of different options.

Workloads

There are 3 different workloads we want to look into:

• CPU bound. …

Ever get called out for a MySQL issue only to realize that there was no issue?  It was a false alarm from the monitor.  We sure have and it’s frustrating, especially at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning!

Many DBAs work in an environment where there is some sort of first level support that gets assigned tickets first.  Unfortunately, many of the times these groups are, shall we say, less than skilled in MySQL.  As a result, they quickly escalate the ticket onto the primary on-call DBA, even when there is really nothing wrong.

Much of the time, there are multiple types of MySQL topology in these environments: standalone, galera cluster, replication, etc.  Writing large runbooks with detailed test cases can be a daunting process and one that will cause many first-level support engineers to give up and simply escalate the issue anyway.

In an effort to avoid undue call outs, we developed a simple bash …

In order to simplify the configuration of MySQL for standalone nodes, clusters, and replication configurations, we decided it would be easiest to maintain a common my.cnf file.  We have to admit, the idea wasn’t ours; we picked the idea up from www.fromdual.com and thought it was such a great idea, we decided to implement it as well.

Below is our version of a standardized my.cnf implementing several of our best practices.  We hope it will be of benefit to you.

########################################################################################################
# my.cnf (Configuration file for MySQL)
#
# Provided by Itchy Ninja Software to implement general best practices for MySQL regardless of server 
# type.  We chose a single file instead of maintaining multiple versions of the configuration file.
# Based upon http://www.fromdual.com/mysql-configuration-file-sample 
#
# Sections are included for Percona XTRADB Cluster …

MySQL-Sandbox is a great tool for testing a new release, and in fact this is what I do when a new MySQL tarball becomes available. I don't think many people are aware of the full testing capabilities of the sandbox, though.
When you think about testing, you may just think of creating a sandbox with the new tarball, and then hammering it with your pet procedure. That works, of course, as the main purpose of MySQL-Sandbox is to allow you to do just that. There is, however, a full test suite that can tell you in a short while if your tarball is compatible with the past or not.
This procedure is quite strict. It has happened several times that I caught a bug in a new release of MySQL, or Percona Server, or MariaDB, just by running this suite.
How MySQL-Sandbox gets testedBefore describing how to test, I would like to show what I do. When a new version of MySQL-Sandbox is ready …

We had a great time meeting with folks from the industry and are excited about the innovations being pursued by the community and various companies. 

Videos of our keynote panel participation and talks are available now.

Percona Live 2015 Keynote Panel discussion - Ritesh Chhajer

High Availability using Percona XtraDB Cluster - Trey Raymond & Yashada Jadhav

MySQL Performance Analyzer - Xiang Rao & Ashwin Nellore

…

We had a great time meeting with folks from the industry and are excited about the innovations being pursued by the community and various companies. 

Videos of our keynote panel participation and talks are available now.

Percona Live 2015 Keynote Panel discussion - Ritesh Chhajer

High Availability using Percona XtraDB Cluster - Trey Raymond & Yashada Jadhav

MySQL Performance Analyzer - Xiang Rao & Ashwin Nellore

…

Yet again, this log buffer edition brings some rich blog posts from Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL.

Oracle:

• Installing Oracle XE, ORDS and Apex on CentOS
• Major Growth is Expected in the DBaaS Space. Are Your Skills Ready?
• How to Hide Actions in OBPM 12c Workspace
• You can configure auto refresh for ADF BC cached LOV and this works out of the box, no special coding is needed.
• Search and …