I recently had to do some customer work involving the McAfee MySQL Audit Plugin and would like to share my experience in this post. Auditing user activity in MySQL has traditionally been challenging. Most data can be obtained from the slow or general log, but this involves a lot of data you don’t need too, and [...]
Replication in MySQL 5.6: GTIDs benefits and limitations – Part 1
Global Transactions Identifiers are one of the new features regarding replication in MySQL 5.6. They open up a lot of opportunities to make the life of DBAs much easier when having to maintain servers under a specific replication topology. However you should keep in mind some limitations of the current implementation. This post is the [...]
Virident vCache vs. FlashCache: Part 2
This is the second part in a two-part series comparing Virident’s vCache to FlashCache. The first part was focused on usability and feature comparison; in this post, we’ll look at some sysbench test results. Disclosure: The research and testing conducted for this post were sponsored by Virident. First, some background information. All tests were conducted [...]
Announcing Percona XtraBackup 2.1.1 GA
Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraBackup 2.1.1 on May 15th 2013. Downloads are available from our download site here and Percona Software Repositories. Percona XtraBackup enables backups without blocking user queries, making it ideal for companies with large data sets and mission-critical applications that cannot tolerate long periods of downtime. Offered [...]
Is Synchronous Replication right for your app?
I talk with lot of people who are really interested in Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) and mostly they are interested in PXC as a high-availability solution. But, what they tend not to think too much about is if moving from async to synchronous replication is right for their application or not. Facts about Galera replication [...]
Webinar: MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema
This Wednesday, May 15 at 10 a.m. Pacific, I’ll be leading a Webinar titled, “Using MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema to Troubleshoot Typical Workload Bottlenecks.” In this Webinar I will offer an overview of Performance Schema, focusing on new features that have been added in MySQL 5.6, go over the configuration and spend most time showing [...]
Percona XtraBackup 2.0.7 for MySQL available for download
Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraBackup 2.0.7 for MySQL on May 6, 2013. Downloads are available from our download site here and Percona Software Repositories. Percona XtraBackup is the world’s only open-source, free MySQL hot backup software that performs non-blocking backups for InnoDB and XtraDB databases. This release is the current GA (Generally Available) [...]
Galera Flow Control in Percona XtraDB Cluster for MySQL
Last week at Percona Live, I delivered a six-hour tutorial about Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) for MySQL. I actually had more material than I covered (by design), but one thing I regret we didn’t cover was Flow control. So, I thought I’d write a post covering flow control because it is important to understand. What [...]
Follow these basics when migrating to Percona XtraDB Cluster for MySQL
Galera/Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) for MySQL is a hot thing right now and some users jump right in without enough testing. Consequently, they’re more likely to either suffer failure or issues that prevent them from moving forward. If you are thinking of migrating your workload to Percona XtraDB Cluster, make sure to go through these [...]
Percona Server 5.5.30-30.2 rerelease fixes non-restart issue
In our last 5.5 series release of Percona Server, we included a regression in the RPM packaging that prevented the server from restarting following an upgrade — instead, the server would remain stopped after the upgrade was completed regardless of its state before updating. This caused some problems for some users, especially if automatic upgrading was configured [...]

