The SnapLogic.org site runs on open source software, including a lot of Python. The bottom of the stack is RedHat Linux, the web server is Apache, the database engine is MySQL, and the main applications are Mailman, Subversion, Trac, Wordpress, and a custom Django application.

All of these pieces play together pretty well, and over the past year we’ve only had a few minor problems to fix. But over the past couple of weeks, we’ve really been hitting Trac hard as we work through our upcoming release, and Trac performance was bad. Really Bad. Like, ‘30 seconds to open a ticket‘ bad.

It’s hard to say if this was a sudden performance drop because we crossed some magic threshold in database size, or if it was slowing getting worse and we really noticed it when we shifted from design to coding. In any case, there are only 1000 tickets in the system so we knew something was wrong.

We turned on the …

Open Source means that the source code is open. There are many inferences that can be made from this, and many stereotypes that can be applied, but in the end, all it means is that you can read the source code as well as use the binaries. I am not a developer. I fully [...]

Zmanda has introduced a new version of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) 2.1 which adds quite a few new capabilities for MySQL users. This version now includes enhanced snapshot support working with Linux LVM, Windows VSS, Solaris ZFS, NeApp SnapManager and Veritas VxFS. When they first told me about the performance on these systems I was blown away. I thought there must be some kind of a trick going on. The trick is to take advantage of the operating system's underlying snapshot capabilities to minimize locking on the database, typically less than one second. Robin, head of our product management group,... READ MORE

We've now officially closed MySQL's acquisition by Sun this morning and I thought I'd make a few observations about the process. I've been through several acquisitions over the years, both on the acquiring and the acquired side, and so far, this one has gone the smoothest. While Sun is obviously a much larger company than MySQL, the approach that the Sun execs and managers have taken has been professional and respectful every step of the way. Not once have I heard Sun employees say "This is the way we do things here." Instead, there has been a strong desire to... READ MORE

While posting about my talk on MySQL Cluster and Drupal I realized something very important about Open Source and how it differs from proprietary software.

Looking at a traditional software and infrastructure consultancy shop you will see that they carry a broad range of products which they care about and which they are actively offerering to customers. For this products they have formal arrangements with suppliers that will both give them licenses, support but also incentives to sell those licenses.

So when a sales guy or a consultant arrives at a customer they are already biased to plug a certain product, and they will try to convince the customer that the product they are selling is the right fit. Even tough when it's a total Misfit.

With the Open Source consultant he won't be plugging a product, he will be listening to his customer and will use the …

Today there was a recent flurry of blog posts, starting with Charles Babcock's interview of Jonathan Schwartz about Sun's strategy of targeting Web 2.0 developers. This brought to light an interesting topic about open source development communities, the perceived insularity of Sun towards the external OpenSolaris developer community, and why Linux will apparently always be more popular and technically stronger than OpenSolaris.

The initial interview led Amanda McPherson of the Linux Foundation to take issue, and long comments on those posts from …

Today was at the faculty of Industrial Design in Delft to attend the first 'c,mm,n Garage' event. c,mm,n - pronounced as common - is a project to develop sustainable mobility. It is led by Stichting Natuur en Milieu, The Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment and currently the main participants are students from a number of Dutch technical universities.

Right now, engineering efforts are focused on a clean, remanufacturable car that runs on electricity generated by a hydrogen fuel cell:
The car is almost completely built out of biodegradable plastics, making it extremely light and environmentally friendly.
There is a YouTube Video available that shows off the exterior design and which gives you a good impression of how open and …

Thanks to Tony Lawrence for inspiring today’s post. Hopefully these links don’t stink. 

Anthony Lawrence: Reasons I Don’t Like Social Media

Tools that once were valuable for pointing out the best of the web often become obsolete or spammy (you might say this about Digg). Tony’s example is StumbleUpon, a link sharing site that I love.  He contends that the social networking site has become clogged with junk or at least doesn’t provide consistent "quality" links. [Updated: Actually check the post comments for …

We are hosting a webcast this Wednesday to talk about backing up corporate data to Amazon?s Simple Storage Service (S3) using Amanda Enterprise. We will demonstrate live, how enterprise users can now use Amanda Enterprise to harness Amazon S3 for a complete data backup, archiving and disaster recovery solution. The webcast will take place on Wednesday February 27 at 10:00AM PST and will last about an hour, including a Q&A session at the end. We hope you can join us to discover a new & cost effective way to leverage online storage services such as Amazon S3 as a part of your corporate data protection strategy. Click here to register.

A