May 20, 2013

What is innodb_support_xa?

A common misunderstanding about innodb_support_xa is that it enables user-initiated XA transactions, that is, transactions that are prepared and then committed on multiple systems, with an external transaction coordinator. This is actually not precisely what this option is for. It enables two-phase commit in InnoDB (prepare, then commit). This is necessary not only for user-initiated [...]

Different flavors of InnoDB flushing

In my recent benchmarks, such as this one about the Virident TachIon card, I used different values for innodb_buffer_pool_size, like 13GB, 52GB, and 144GB, for testing the tpcc-mysql database with size 100G. This was needed in order to test different memory/dataset size ratios. But why is it important, and how does it affect how InnoDB works [...]

High Rate insertion with MySQL and Innodb

I again work with the system which needs high insertion rate for data which generally fits in memory. Last time I worked with similar system it used MyISAM and the system was built using multiple tables. Using multiple key caches was the good solution at that time and we could get over 200K of inserts/sec. [...]

MySQL 5.5.8 – in search of stability

A couple of days ago, Dimitri published a blog post, Analyzing Percona’s TPCC-like Workload on MySQL 5.5, which was  a response to my post, MySQL 5.5.8 and Percona Server: being adaptive. I will refer to Dimitri’s article as article [1]. As always, Dimitri has provided a very detailed and thoughtful article, and I strongly recommend reading if [...]

Webinar: Introduction to Percona Server, XtraDB and Xtrabackup

We’ve had such a large number of signups to our Migrating MyISAM to InnoDB webinar, that we decided to hold one more before the year is out: December, 8th 9AM PST: Introduction to Percona Server, XtraDB and Xtrabackup.

Moving from MyISAM to Innodb or XtraDB. Basics

I do not know if it is because we’re hosting a free webinar on migrating MyISAM to Innodb or some other reason but recently I see a lot of questions about migration from MyISAM to Innodb. Webinar will cover the process in a lot more details though I would like to go over basics in [...]

Announcing Training for Operations Teams

We’re opening up registration for our new training courses today.  In short: we are moving from two days to a new four-day format.  The new additions are created by: Splitting our current InnoDB day in half. We now have one day for DBAs, and one day just on InnoDB topics. A new Operations Day – covering [...]

Storing MySQL Binary logs on NFS Volume

There is a lot of discussions whenever running MySQL storing data on NFS is a good idea. There is a lot of things for and against this and this post is not about them. The fact is number of people run their databases on NetApp and other forms of NFS storage and this post is [...]

Tuning InnoDB Concurrency Tickets

InnoDB has an oft-unused parameter innodb_concurrency_tickets that seems widely misunderstood. From the docs: “The number of threads that can enter InnoDB concurrently is determined by the innodb_thread_concurrency variable. A thread is placed in a queue when it tries to enter InnoDB if the number of threads has already reached the concurrency limit. When a thread [...]

The Doom of Multiple Storage Engines

One of the big “Selling Points” of MySQL is support for Multiple Storage engines, and from the glance view it is indeed great to provide users with same top level SQL interface allowing them to store their data many different way. As nice as it sounds the in theory this benefit comes at very significant [...]