Recently we put together a consolidation benchmark to see how an open-source stack performs against the proprietary stack from Microsoft. Solaris, MySQL, and Sun Web Server running on the open-source UltraSPARC T2 processor were pitted against a Microsoft SW stack running on a 4-socket QC Xeon server. This benchmark highlights the continued trend to incorporate MySQL open-source databases and how it works under virtualization (Solaris Zones).

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 (1.4 Ghz UltraSPARC T2 processor) and Solaris Containers managing a consolidation of Open-Source Software components (MySQL Database and Sun Java System Web Server) provided 2.4 times better performance than the HP DL580 system (four Xeon quad-core processors) and a major virtualization software, Microsoft Windows 2003 Server EE, Microsoft SQLserver database and Microsoft IIS webserver.

The Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 using the MySQL database in Solaris zones is …

Some people might have noticed that Workbench runs very slowly and flickers a lot in their machines. Other people will be able to work without noticing any significant sluggishness with the diagram graphics. The difference is because Workbench’s custom canvas may use hardware accelerated OpenGL graphics or non-accelerated software rendering, depending on the system (ie, whether or not a 3D accelerated graphics card is available or not). We were expecting that the most reasonably recent machines (maybe 5 years old or less) would have at least some basic graphics acceleration, but for some reason, that seems to not always be the case. Apparently, some people that have decent systems with ATI or Intel cards seem to get the fallback software rendered canvas, which will result in sluggish graphics.

We are still not sure why Cairo/Glitz (the underlying graphics library used by our drawing …

How often do we think about our http sessions implementation? I mean, do you know, how your currently used sessions-related code will behave when sessions number in your database will grow up to millions (or, even, hundreds of millions) of records? This is one of the things we do not think about. But if you’ll think about it, you’ll notice, that 99% of your session-related operations are read-only and 99% of your sessions writes are not needed. Almost all your sessions table records have the same information: session_id and serialized empty session in the data field.

Looking at this sessions-related situation we have created really simple (and, at the same time, really useful for large Rails projects) plugin, which replaces ActiveRecord-based session store and makes sessions much more effective. Below you can find some information about implementation details and decisions we’ve made in this plugin, but if you just want to try it, then …

I'm pleased to announce that Tag1 Consulting has partnered up with MySQL AB to offer an online presentation titled "Achieving Optimal MySQL Performance For Drupal". Aiming to provide a better understanding of how to properly monitor and tune your MySQL database, the online Webinar will take place on Thursday, January 31st, 2008, at 16:00 UTC (11:00 am EST). The presentation will last 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for questions and answers.

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Curt Monash has an interesting post. As with everything on the web, I agree and disagree with various bits - which is one of the great things about blogging … but this comment concerns me enough to respond, since it’s not so much an opinion but incorrect technical information…

As for your distinction between too many connections and memory pools ? lack of memory is the reason for limits on connections.

Lack of memory is actually _NOT_ the reason for limits on connections in a well tuned MySQL installation. MySQL is a multi-threaded application and as such in its current implementation allocates a thread to a connection. In the standard web hosting platform, which is Linux, there is a point at which Linux itself can’t actually deal with the threads effectively, thus getting you into an overloaded run queue situation. The answer …

InnoDB is a transaction-safe, ACID compliant MySQL storage engine. It has commit, rollback, and crash recovery capabilities, and offers row level locking. The engine's overview page explains, “InnoDB has been designed for maximum performance when processing large data volumes. Its CPU efficiency is probably not matched by any other disk-based relational database engine.”

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Whew! I just finished a marathon of revisions. It's been a while since I posted about our progress, so here's an update for the curious readers.

DRBD 8.2.3 was released today. Even though just a micro release in terms of version numbering, it comes with a couple of very handy brand new features: on-line device verification, and tunable processor affinity.
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I have finally managed to watch and slightly edit the September 2007 Boston MySQL User Group presentation I did on the MySQL Proxy.

It's geared towards beginners, and has lots of examples, including explaining some of the examples that come bundled with the MySQL Proxy.

Direct Play

Download video (.wmv file, 612 Mb)
Download video (.wmv file, 76.10 Mb)

Enjoy!

Some resources:
Presentation Slides PowerPoint (ppt) or PDF or …

Welcome to the 72nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.
Oracle OpenWorld (OOW) is over, and Lucas Jellema of the AMIS Technology blog notes the OOW Content Catalog has been updated with most of the presentations available for download.
On his way home from OOW, Chris Muir of the appropriately titled One Size Doesn’t Fit All blog notes how OOW and the Australian Oracle User Group Conference and OOW compare with regards to 99% fewer attendees in AUSOUG Perth conference - from 45k down to 350. …