Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.5.27-28.0 on August 23rd, 2012 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories). Based on MySQL 5.5.27, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.5.27-28.0 is now the current stable release in the 5.5 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can [...]
ALTER TABLE: Creating Index by Sort and Buffer Pool Size
Today I was looking at the ALTER TABLE performance with fast index creation and without it with different buffer pool sizes. Results are pretty interesting. I used modified Sysbench table for these tests because original table as initially created only has index on column K which initially contains only zeros, which means index is very [...]
Building Indexes by Sorting In Innodb (AKA Fast Index Creation)
Innodb can indexes built by sort since Innodb Plugin for MySQL 5.1 which is a lot faster than building them through insertion, especially for tables much larger than memory and large uncorrelated indexes you might be looking at 10x difference or more. Yet for some reason Innodb team has chosen to use very small (just [...]
Announcement of Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.5.23
Our previous GA release of Percona XtraDB Cluster caused a lot of interest and feedback. I am happy to announce next version Percona XtraDB Cluster 5.5.23, which comes with bug fixes and improvements. List of changes: Fixes merged from upstream (Codership-mysql) Support for MyISAM, now changes to MyISAM tables are replicated to other nodes Improvements [...]
The relationship between Innodb Log checkpointing and dirty Buffer pool pages
This is a time-honored topic, and there’s no shortage of articles on the topic on this blog. I wanted to write a post trying to condense and clarify those posts, as it has taken me a while to really understand this relationship. Some basic facts Most of us know that writing into Innodb updates buffer [...]
Improved InnoDB fast index creation
One of the serious limitations in the fast index creation feature introduced in the InnoDB plugin is that it only works when indexes are explicitly created using ALTER TABLE or CREATE INDEX. Peter has already blogged about it before, here I’ll just briefly reiterate other cases that might benefit from that feature: when ALTER TABLE [...]
Percona Server and XtraBackup weekly news, April 4th
Here’s the weekly review of Percona Server and XtraBackup news. Before I begin, let me briefly address a common question. We are sometimes asked about our plans in light of developments in the market such as MySQL 5.5, MariaDB, Drizzle, etc. The short answer is that we’re very happy with Oracle’s GPL’ed MySQL releases as [...]
Percona Server 5.5.8 Beta Release
It’s finally here! Percona Server Percona Server 5.5.8-20.0 is now available for download. This is a beta release of Percona’s enhancements to the MySQL 5.5.8 server. Here are some highlights: Performance and scalability improvements throughout the server and storage engine Optimizations for flash storage such as SSD, Virident, and FusionIO Optimizations for cloud computing The [...]
Ultimate MySQL variable and status reference list
I am constantly referring to the amazing MySQL manual, especially the option and variable reference table. But just as frequently, I want to look up blog posts on variables, or look for content in the Percona documentation or forums. So I present to you what is now my newest Firefox toolbar bookmark: an option and [...]
Impact of the sort buffer size in MySQL
The parameter sort_buffer_size is one the MySQL parameters that is far from obvious to adjust. It is a per session buffer that is allocated every time it is needed. The problem with the sort buffer comes from the way Linux allocates memory. Monty Taylor (here) have described the underlying issue in detail, but basically above [...]

