http://tomictech.com Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:11:13 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The mysql proxy project has tremendous potential to make mysql administration and usage easier. I decided to throw some load at it to get a feel for how stable and performant it is. On EC2, I set up 6 "small" images in an example proxy setup:- One client machine to ... http://tomictech.com/2008/07/02/mysql-proxy-061-performance-tests/ A good rule of thumb is that a DBA should not let the size of his/her database grow to much more than 50% of the available disk space. I'm sure everyone has a story of being burned in some way by not following this advice. Before promoting 5.1 to some beefier ... http://tomictech.com/2008/06/26/a-lesson-in-never-letting-your-filesystem-fill-up-too-much/ Testing MySQL sequential IO performance with different IO schedulers - Part 1I stumbled upon an interesting article discussing the different Linux I/O schedulers that are available in the 2.6 kernel, and also discussing some of the deficiencies of the 2.4 "Linus elevator" I/O scheduler. The default scheduler as of Kernel ... http://tomictech.com/2008/06/23/testing-mysql-sequential-io-performance-with-different-io-schedulers-part-1/ If there is one thing that a DBA or data warehouse architect can count on, it is that data volumes will increase while budgets will decrease.This is why MySQL 5.1 and its partitioning capabilities are so interesting. I'm going to demonstrate how you can build a small/medium-sized data warehouse or ... http://tomictech.com/2008/06/16/building-a-data-warehouse-on-a-budget-with-mysql-51/ mysql 5.1 is nearing release, with the present release candidate 5.1.24. The most important new feature, in my eyes, is the new partitioning capability. When I get some time, I will write up a more complete post on my experiences so far with 5.1 partitioning, but I am going to try ... http://tomictech.com/2008/06/05/mysql-repair-optimize-partition-errors/ Over the years, the database world has been buzzing with the strategic threat posed to the established players by upstart open-source database systems. Oracle and IBM would no longer be able to gouge defenseless small and medium-sized businesses of non-trivial portions of their IT budgets for a mere database licence. ... http://tomictech.com/2008/06/02/sun-caught-in-a-pincer-with-mysql/ Over the past few years of dealing with mysql in larger environments, one thing I've always felt that ALTER TABLE statements are flaky with replication, but could never really prove it. I never had a chance to dig into some of strange things I saw, and would tend to overlook ... http://tomictech.com/2008/05/20/alter-table-flakiness-and-mysql-replication/ I am, for the most part, a do-it-yourself type of person. I fix my own car if I can; I even have four healthy tomato plants growing in pots outside as we speak -- the plants will take that little extra CO2 out of the air and give me great ... http://tomictech.com/2008/05/10/a-case-for-kettle-for-your-next-etl-or-data-warehouse-project/ Here is a situation I've run into a few times when dealing with mysql databases. We're trying to run a one-off query against a high-traffic, large table and the WHERE condition is against a non-indexed field. Let's say our table is 5GB in size. We issue the following: SELECT count(*) ... http://tomictech.com/2008/04/02/mysql-io-performance-analysis-with-iostat/ I'm happy to report that my patch for a potentially nasty bug in the mysqlhotcopy script has been accepted into the mysql codebase. It's a great feeling to finally contribute something, however small, back to the mysql community. If you have a master/slave environment with multiple slaves, and you do periodic ... http://tomictech.com/2008/04/02/subtle-mysqlhotcopy-bug-fix-finally-accepted/