May 19, 2013

Virident vCache vs. FlashCache: Part 1

(This is part one of a two part series) Over the past few weeks I have been looking at a preview release of Virident’s vCache software, which is a kernel module and set of utilities designed to provide functionality similar to that of FlashCache. In particular, Virident engaged Percona to do a usability and feature-set [...]

Percona Live MySQL Conference 2013 wrap-up

The Percona Live MySQL Conference & Expo 2013 was April 22-25 in Santa Clara, California. This was Percona’s second year organizing the conference and we were very pleased with the event and the feedback (check the #perconalive hashtag for a sampling of the great comments such as this from Tom Krouper or this from John [...]

Rotating MySQL slow logs safely

This blog post is part two of two. Like part one, published Wednesday, this is a cross-post from Groupon’s engineering blog. Thanks again to Kyle Oppenheim at Groupon. And one more reminder that I’ll be at the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo next week in Santa Clara, California so look for me there. You [...]

Keynotes, BOFs, and the Community Networking Reception at Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo

The Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo begins next Monday and runs April 22-25, 2013. Attendees will see great keynotes from leaders in the industry including representatives from Oracle, Amazon Web Services, HP, Continuent, and Percona. They can also participate in thought provoking Birds of a Feather sessions on Tuesday night and the Wednesday night [...]

MySQL Backup tools used by Percona Remote DBA for MySQL

As part of Percona Remote DBA for MySQL service we recognize that reliable backups are one of the most important things we can bring to the table. In my experience handling emergencies, the single worst thing that can happen is finding out you don’t have backups available when some sort of data loss or catastrophic [...]

MySQL 5.6 vs MySQL 5.5 and the Star Schema Benchmark

So far most of the benchmarks posted about MySQL 5.6 use the sysbench OLTP workload.  I wanted to test a set of queries which, unlike sysbench, utilize joins.  I also wanted an easily reproducible set of data which is more rich than the simple sysbench table.  The Star Schema Benchmark (SSB) seems ideal for this. [...]

InnoDB Full-text Search in MySQL 5.6: Part 2, The Queries!

This is part 2 in a 3 part series. In part 1, we took a quick look at some initial configuration of InnoDB full-text search and discovered a little bit of quirky behavior; here, we are going to run some queries and compare the result sets. Our hope is that the one of two things [...]

CentOS 5.8 users: your UTF-8 data is in peril with Perl MySQL

CentOS 5.8 and earlier use Perl module DBD::mysql v3.0007 which has a bug that causes Perl not to flag UTF-8 data as being UTF-8.  Presuming that the MySQL table/column is using UTF-8, and the Perl MySQL connection is also using UTF-8, then a correct system returns: PV = 0x9573840 "\343\203\213 \303\250"\0 [UTF8 "\x{30cb} \x{e8}"] That’s a Devel::Peek inside a Perl scalar variable which [...]

Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013: The talks I want to see

I’ve been woefully neglectful of my responsibilities to post regularly about Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013 (PLCME 2013), but here’s some highlights of what I am planning to attend from the schedule.  Read to the very bottom for the chance to win a free full pass to the conference! When picking talks to attend, [...]

Deadline Near for BOFs and Lightning Talk Submissions for Percona Live MySQL Conference

The deadline is fast approaching to submit proposals for the Birds of a Feather Sessions (BOFs) and the Lightning Talks (presented during the Wednesday Evening Networking Reception) for the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013. Applications for the DotOrg Pavilion close soon as well. The deadline is February 24th for all three opportunities so [...]