“To be competitive with non-open-source cloud deployment options, open source databases need to invest in “ease-of-use.” There is no tolerance for complexity in many development teams as we move to “ops-less” deployment models.” –Peter Zaitsev

I have interviewed Peter Zaitsev, Co-Founder and CEO of Percona.
In this interview, Peter talks about the Open Source Databases market; the Cloud; the scalability challenges at Facebook; compares MySQL, MariaDB, and MongoDB; and presents Percona’s contribution to the MySQL and MongoDB ecosystems.

RVZ

Q1. What are the main technical challenges in obtaining application scaling?

Peter Zaitsev: When it comes to scaling, there are different types. There is a Facebook/Google/Alibaba/Amazon scale: these …

We’re heading into the final day here at Percona Live 2016! People are looking a little tired, but still excited for some excellent talks today. Once again the day started off with two great keynote lectures. Read to the end for an important announcement!

Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona
Winning with Open Source Databases

Peter discussed what makes the open source community so vibrant and powerful, and why it is essential to preserve that spirit. Data is critical to the success of your business. You rely on your database and its …

Applications often become impacted by MySQL performance. Optimization is the obvious solution but where to start? Join me on July 2 at 11 a.m. Pacific and I’ll show you how to optimize MySQL in a practical way – spending time on what gives you the best return. Many of you have heard me talk on this topic before and this updated presentation will get you up to speed on the latest areas to consider when improving MySQL performance.

I’ll be pointing out the most important things you need to get right for each of the following:

• Hardware
• MySQL Configuration
• Schema and Queries
• Application Architecture

I’ll also share some tools and techniques to focus on the queries most important for your application. At the end of this webinar, aptly titled “ …

Percona Live is moving from London to Amsterdam this year and the event is also expanding to three full days. Percona Live Europe 2015, September 21-23, will be at the Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Centre. The call for speakers and Super Saver registration are now open. Hurry though because the deadline for submitting a speaking proposal is June 21st and Super Saver registration ends July 5th!

This year’s conference will feature one day of tutorials and two days of keynote talks and breakout …

It seems these days if anyone knows anything about tuning InnoDB, it’s that you MUST tune your innodb_buffer_pool_size to 80% of your physical memory. This is such prolific tuning advice, it seems engrained in many a DBA’s mind.  The MySQL manual to this day refers to this rule, so who can blame the DBA?  The question is: does it makes sense?

What uses the memory on your server?

Before we question such advice, let’s consider what can take up RAM in a typical MySQL server in their broad categories.  This list isn’t necessarily complete, but I think it outlines the large areas a MySQL server could consume memory.

• OS Usage: Kernel, running processes, filesystem cache, etc.
• MySQL fixed usage: query cache, InnoDB …

MySQL sharding is one of the most used and surely the most abused MySQL scaling technology. My April 2 Dzone article, “To Shard, or Not to Shard,” proved there is indeed quite an interest in this topic.

As such, I’m hosting a live webinar tomorrow (April 22) that will shed light on questions about sharding with MySQL. It’s titled: To Shard or Not to Shard That is the Question!

I’ll be answering questions such as:

• Is sharding right for your application or should you use other scaling technologies?
• If you’re sharding, what things do you need to consider and which questions do you need to have answered?
• What kind of specific technologies can assist you with sharding?

I hope …

It is my pleasure to announce that Percona has acquired Tokutek and will take over development and support for TokuDB® and TokuMX™ as well as the revolutionary Fractal Tree® indexing technology that enables those products to deliver improved performance, reliability and compression for modern Big Data applications.

At Percona we have been working with the Tokutek team since 2009, helping to improve performance and scalability. The TokuDB storage engine has been available for Percona Server for about a year, so joining forces is quite a natural step for us.

Fractal Tree indexing technology—developed by years of data science research at MIT, Stony Brook University and Rutgers University—is the new generation data structure which, for many workloads, leapfrogs traditional B-tree technology which was invented in 1972 (over 40 years ago!).  It is also often …

Years ago when I worked for the MySQL Support organization at the original MySQL AB, we spoke about MySQL Support as insurance and focused on a value proposition similar to that of car insurance. For your car to be fully covered, you must purchase car insurance before the incident happens – in fact most places around the world require automobile insurance. Similarly with many organizations, any production-use technology might be mandated to have its own insurance in the way of 24/7 support.

I think however this is a very one-sided view that does not capture the full value (and ROI) that a MySQL Support contract with Percona provides. Let’s look at the different dimensions of value it provides based on the different support cases we have received throughout the years.

Reduce and Prevent …

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Apple has acquired FoundationDB. And while I didn’t see any mention if this news on the FoundationDB website, they do have an announcement saying: “We have made the decision to evolve our company mission and, as of today, we will no longer offer downloads.”

This is an unfortunate development – I have been watching FoundationDB technology for years and was always impressed in terms of its performance and features. I was particularly impressed by their demo at last year’s Percona Live MySQL and Expo. Using their Intel NUC-based Cluster, I remember Ori Herrnstadt showing me how FoundationDB handles single-node …

Talking with Percona Live attendees last year I heard a couple of common themes. First, people told me that there is a lot of great advanced content at Percona Live but there is not much for people just starting to learn the ropes with MySQL. Second, they would like us to find a way to make such basic content less expensive.

I’m pleased to say we’re able to accommodate both of these wishes this year at Percona Live! We have created a two-day intensive track called “MySQL 101” that runs April 15-16. MySQL 101 is designed for developers, system administrators and DBAs familiar with other databases but not with MySQL. And of course it’s ideal for anyone else who would like to expand their professional experience to include MySQL. The sessions are designed to lay a solid foundation on many aspects of MySQL development, design and …