MySQL Performance Blog

Percona has a strong team of MySQL developers and consultants on board, so we decided to prepare MySQL releases with our patches and third-party patches which we think are very useful. We actually use these internally and for our customers.

Current releases include:

• microslow patch (enables microsecond resolution in slow logs)
• execution plan (show info about query execution in slow log)
• InnoDB statistic (show extended InnoDB usage during query execution in slow log)
• Google’s patches with user statistics, and statistics about tables and indexes usage

You can find more info about some of our patches here:
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/04/20/updated-msl-microslow-patch-installation-walk-through/
Some features were sponsored by customers and we are allowed to publish them under GPL and some we developed for internal needs.

We prepared 5.0.62 release (based on MySQL Enterprise 5.0.62 source, taken from http://mirror.provenscaling.com/mysql/enterprise/source/5.0/) and 5.1.26-rc release, and they are currently available only as source .tar.gz, but we will provide public access to our YUM repository with binaries, RedHat/CentOS and Suse RPMS / SRPMS when they’re available. Here are links to the source releases:

mysql-5.0.62-percona.tar.bz2 md5:0d8a37e09eca93cde6170866293a82ff
mysql-5.1.26-percona.tar.bz2 md5:0574b38755786a97bc476058051cbe82

You can find the individual patches here:
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/mysql-patches/

Besides standard 5.1, we are going to make releases with the InnoDB plugin version compiled in (not as a plugin), as the current system with independent InnoDB binaries does not seem handy for us.

We have couple of ideas what else we can develop and include in our releases, but also your comments are very welcome.

We are still investigating Launchpad features, there is our -percona branch, but it is outdated at this moment. Probably our next releases will be based on Launchpad branches, we still need to decide how it fits into our development model.

Disclaimer: Although we use tested releases as best as we can, and use them internally, we do not claim they are bug-free, and you should use them only if you know what you are doing.

If you’re a Perl and/or Python expert (preferably both), Percona may have a job for you.

We’re looking to either hire or sponsor significant development efforts for some open-source tools for MySQL, including but not limited to Maatkit and the Master-Master Replication Manager. This could be full-time or part-time, depending on the person and what seems to make the most sense. You can work remotely.

You must already be an expert coder. You don’t have to be a MySQL expert, though it will help if you are at least at an intermediate level with it. You must have proven experience in test-driven development. You will be writing clean, efficient, well-tested code. Your work will be open-source and transparent to the world, and open-source experience is a plus. You can expect expert guidance and help (especially with the MySQL-specific parts), but a significant amount of freedom and autonomy as well.

Send your resume and samples of your work to ‘jobmysql’ at our blog’s domain name.

As you know we love to analyze performance of various MySQL features, benchmark, compare, analyze things and post our findings on MySQL Performance Blog. However recently we got too busy with serving out customers and the backlog of things to take a look and write about is just growing larger and larger. So we decided to hire someone who could focus on such tasks.

What are we expecting from MySQL Performance Engineer ?

• Such person should have a passion for making things to work fast or finding why they are slow.
• One should have an “evil mind” to be able to put system in the conditions developers would not think about.
• One should have an “X-Ray vision” understanding what happens on all layers (MySQL, Operation System, Hardware) when for example row is being inserted into Innodb table on Linux stored on LVM volume over RAID10
• One should understand trusting documentation is worst mistake ever and if you need to find the truth source code is your best friend.
• One should have good MySQL knowledge including main storage engines, and best have experience using it in practice
• One should know how one could profile applications - valgrind, oprofile, dtrace and similar tools
• One should know C/C++ to be able to understand performance issues discovered and prototype or develop fixes for them
• One should know some scripting languages - bash,perl,php to be able to script benchmark runs

This remote position which is open for candidate worldwide. We also do not require perfect Spoken English for this position, though candidate should be able to read and write in English language pretty well.

If you are such a person or know someone who might be interested, drop us a note.

You can learn more about our company at Percona web site.

People frequently ask me if the fact we keep information public can hurt our consulting business ? Lets keep aside for the moment amount of new business publishing this information brings to us but think it also have significant negative effect because people find information on MySQL Performance Blog and use it instead of purchasing our services ?

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