Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance a number of interesting reports were published that examined its role in establishing MariaDB as an alternative development branch for MySQL and as a vendor-neutral open source database collective.

I had a few questions myself, which Monty Widenius and Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona, were good enough to answer for me via email. They also agreed for the exchange to be published here. This is what they had to say:

Q: Monty has stated that the intention is to open up the Alliance to include other open source database projects - any indication of how this would be done given the diverse …

We’re proud to announce the availability of the 2nd alpha-version of MSQL Workbench 5.2. As you may already know, this is the youngest member of the workbench-family and also the version that adds another role - the one of the database-querying-tool - to the application. There have been major enhancements - not only to the querying part - since we released the first alpha version. Please keep in mind that this is still an alpha version and it’s not recommended for use in a production environment. While most parts of the final application are already in place there are still a few things left to implement or details subject to change. Please download the program, take it for a test-drive and tell us what you think.

Source code and binary packages of MySQL Workbench 5.2.1 OSS for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard and some Linux distributions are freely available for download at:

…

First there was LAMP.  But are you using GLAMMP?  You have probably not heard of it because we just coined the term while chatting at work.  You know LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP or Perl and sometimes Python). So, what are the extra letters for?

The G is for Gearman - Gearman is a system to farm out work to other machines, dispatching function calls to machines that are better suited to do work, to do work in parallel, to load balance lots of function calls, or to call functions between languages.

The extra M is for Memcached - memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web …

Following on the heels of our memcached performance tests on SunFire X2270 ( Sun's Nehalem-based server) running OpenSolaris, we ran the same tests on the same server but this time on RHEL5. As mentioned in the post presenting the first memcached results, a 10GBE Intel Oplin card was used in order to achieve the high throughput rates possible with these servers. It turned out that using this card on linux involved a bit of work resulting in driver and kernel re-builds.

• With the default ixgbe driver from the RedHat distribution (version 1.3.30-k2 on kernel 2.6.18)), the interface simply hung during the benchmark test.
• This led to downloading the driver from the Intel site (1.3.56.11-2-NAPI) and re-compiling it. This version does …

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance some people have assumed that it is only a matter of time before MariaDB becomes the de facto replacement for MySQL.

That assumes that Oracle will allow the development of MySQL to stagnate, either deliberately or through neglect - something that we have expressed our doubts about, but even if that were the case it appears that the GPL (or more to the point MySQL’s dual licensing strategy) may restrict the potential for MariaDB.

Curt Monash recently raised the question of whether closed-source storage engines can be used with MySQL (and, by …

Following on the heels of our memcached performance tests on SunFire X2270 ( Sun's Nehalem-based server) running OpenSolaris, we ran the same tests on the same server but this time on RHEL5. As mentioned in the post presenting the first memcached results, a 10GBE Intel Oplin card was used in order to achieve the high throughput rates possible with these servers. It turned out that using this card on linux involved a bit of work resulting in driver and kernel re-builds.

• With the default ixgbe driver from the RedHat distribution (version 1.3.30-k2 on kernel 2.6.18)), the interface simply hung during the benchmark test.
• This led to downloading the driver from the Intel site (1.3.56.11-2-NAPI) and re-compiling it. This version …

Following on the heels of our memcached performance tests on SunFire X2270 ( Sun's Nehalem-based server) running OpenSolaris, we ran the same tests on the same server but this time on RHEL5. As mentioned in the post presenting the first memcached results, a 10GBE Intel Oplin card was used in order to achieve the high throughput rates possible with these servers. It turned out that using this card on linux involved a bit of work resulting in driver and kernel re-builds.

• With the default ixgbe driver from the RedHat distribution (version 1.3.30-k2 on kernel 2.6.18)), the interface simply hung during the benchmark test.
• This led to downloading the driver from the Intel site (1.3.56.11-2-NAPI) and re-compiling it. This version …

So lets test some different configurations and try and build some best practices around Multiple SSD’s:

Which is better? Raid 5 or Raid 10?

As with regular disks, Raid 10 seems to performance better ( accept for pure reads ).  I did get a lot of movement test to test like with the 67% read test -vs- the 75% or 80% tests. But all in all RAID 10 seemed to be the optimal config.

Should you enable the controller cache? One of the things I have found in my single drive tests is that “dumb” controllers tend to give better performance numbers then “smart” controllers. Really expensive controllers tend to have extra logic to compensate for the limitations of traditional disk. So I decided to play with some of the controller options. The obvious one is cache on the controller.

Some tests showed substantially better performance when the disk cache was disabled ( both read & write ).

If better …

Open Database Alliance formed. Oracle buys Virtual Iron. AccesStream reaches version 1.0. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

I’ve just met a fork named Maria
MySQL founder Monty Widenius and Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev announced the launch of the Open Database Alliance - “a collection of companies working together to provide the software, support and services for MariaDB, an enterprise-grade, community-developed branch of MySQL.”

Continuent and Open Query quickly announced their membership, while Monty later …

Everyone loves SSD.  It’s a hot topic all around the MySQL community with vendors lining up all kinds of new solutions to attack the “disk io”  problem that has plagued us all for years and years.  At this year’s user conference I talked about SSD’s and MySQL.   Those who follow my blog know I love IO and I love to benchmark anything that can help overcome IO issues.  One of the most exciting things out their at this point are the Intel x-25e drives.  These bad boys are not only fast but relatively inexpensive.  How fast are they?  Let’s just do a quick bit of review here and peak at the single drive #’s from sysbench.    Here you can see that a single X25-e outperforms all my other single drive test.

Yep you have probably seen this type of chart on other sites…   The great thing about the Intel drives is their performance on writes, this difference gives …