By now you have probably heard about the MySQL thread pool plugin and API, but you may not have fully processed the details. Here’s the quick summary:  With the new thread pool plugin, there is now an alternative way to handle connection threads in MySQL Enterprise Edition.  With the plugin, MySQL connection threads are shared like an extraordinarily well managed timeshare in Hawaii.  When one connection is “idle”, asking nothing of and expecting nothing from the database, another connection can use that same thread for its database requests.  Threads are released by each connection as soon as the request is completed and  go back into the pool for re-use – just like the theoretical timeshare is up for grabs on the weeks you are not there.

In the older, and still default connection thread model, threads are dedicated to a single client  for the life of the connection and there are as many …

All DBAs understand the importance and priority of quick, reliable database backup and recovery operations.  In fact, dating back to my early days with MySQL, the most commonly requested product features from the MySQL user base have been around online, non-blocking backup solutions for running MySQL servers.  In response, Oracle now provides MySQL Enterprise Backup ("MEB") which performs high performant, online "hot" backups for MySQL databases.  MEB provides all of the backup/recovery features and functionality DBAs expect, all from a scriptable command line interface.  You can learn all about MEB in the related MySQL docs.

My congratulations and appreciation go out to Lars Thalmann and the MySQL Enterprise Backup engineering team for the …

I wrote this up a while ago and decided that I didn’t want to lose it in a shuffle of documents during my transition to a new workstation. It’s the basics of setting up Heartbeat (LVS) + DRBD (block replication between active/passive master servers) + MySQL. This should give you the basics of a H/A system without the benefits of SAN but also without the associated cost. The validity of this setup for H/A purposes is highly dependent on your workload and environment. You should know the ins and outs of your H/A solution before deciding to blame the system for not performing as expected. As with all production systems you should test, test, test and test some more before going live.

When I get around to it later I’ll post my How-To for setting up RHCS + SAN + MySQL. You can download the DRBD document PDF here: …

Quick update to the framework that was released yesterday; I’ve added automatic graph generation. I chose DyGraphs due to the quick ability to enable support – the HTML is very quick and simply loads the CSV data. It has the same zooming features of Highcharts without the JS overhead.

Now when you run a load test you will get (in the output directory) a mixture of files: the main cumulative CSV and HTML file for the hostname that was tested, and then one CSV and HTML per report variable that was tested. This means you don’t have to drag the main CSV file into an alternate program or spend time parsing out certain variables one at a time to generate specific graphs.  I’ve also added support for limiting output of SNMP variables (LOAD,CPU,MEM). Head over here and download the update: http://code.google.com/p/quadrant-framework/

To enable …

It seems that everyone loves load testing these days. Problem is that everyone is using their own quick scripts, simple or complex, to drive their tests without the ability for other DBAs to duplicate those tests. Let’s say I write a great test and share my results and graphs on the blog – you want to run the same tests to see how your new DB servers compare in performance: this framework allows you to do that without duplicating any work or writing code. This is a basic release that will get the ball rolling. I’ve included some sample tests in the README file, so give them a try.

This codebase offers a user friendly framework for creating and visualizing MySQL database load test jobs. It is based around Sysbench, which is generally considered the industry standard load test application. The framework allows you to do the following:

• standardize your tests without requiring you to write one-off bash scripts to handle …

So I’ve been doing a fair number of automated load tests these past six months. Primarily with Sysbench, which is a fine, fine tool. First I started using some simple bash based loop controls to automate my overnight testing, but as usually happens with shell scripts they grew unwieldy and I rewrote them in python. Now I have some flexible and easily configurable code for sysbench based MySQL benchmarking to offer the community. I’ve always been a fan of giving back to such a helpful group of people – you’ll never hear me complain about “my time isn’t free”. So, let me know what you want in an ideal testing environment (from a load testing framework automation standpoint) and I’ll integrate it into my existing framework and then release it via the BSD license. The main goal here is to have a standardized modular framework, based on sysbench, that allows anyone to compare their server performance via repeatable tests. It’s fun to see …

As you know, Tomas announced the availability of MySQL 5.6.2 Dev Milestone in his MySQL O'Reilly and Collaborate keynote presentations a few weeks back.  Downloads so far have been great, which reflects the feedback and excitement we picked up on from the attendees of both events, especially at the O'Reilly Community reception on that Wednesday (it was great to so many friends, family, peers there!).

You can read John Russell's excellent recap of the new things in 5.6.2 and new innovations currently available in the MySQL Labs here.  And all of the 5.6 ready docs are available to help you learn how to enable and implement those you might find most interesting.

I am especially excited about our continued use of the …

The announcements at the O'Reilly MySQL and Oracle Collaborate conferences last week mark an exciting milestone in the development of MySQL replication.  The purpose of this blog is to summarize those announcements and provide links to further reading, published directly by the engineers who have been working hard to take MySQL replication to the next level.

A number of significant replication enhancements were released as part of the MySQL 5.5 GA just a few months ago. 
We are always listening to our customers and the community.  And, based on their input, the MySQL engineering team has continued to rapidly evolve replication functionality - enabling new classes of applications to rely on MySQL for their …

Great news was announced today at the Collaborate 11 conference today;  the first development milestone release of MySQL 5.6.2 is now available to the MySQL Community!  This is significant because 5.6.2 builds on the momentum generated by the performance, scalability, InnoDB and Replication improvements that rolled out in version 5.5 just last Dec.  It also marks somewhat of a paradigm shift in how the MySQL Engineering team delivers new, defined sets of stable, development complete features (development "milestones") and cutting edge, currently under development, delivered early and often features via http://labs.mysql.com/.  Both options provide a means for Community users to begin using new versions and, more importantly, new features of MySQL very early on ensuring the final product has undergone the highest degree of testing, validation and hardening before we deem it production ready.

 
Some of …

Have you ever looked at your processlist and seen queries in the state “copying to tmp table” and then run an explain on it and noticed that the tmp table is being created on disk? Happens a lot with some servers and some workloads. Of course disk is much slower than RAM so this becomes a slow process and makes queries execute slower than they could if they were allowed to use RAM. So, one way to get this process to speed up (aside from tuning your queries which should be done first) is to create a tmpfs or ram-disk and let MySQL use that for it’s temp-table-on-disk creations. MySQL on Linux defaults to /tmp for the tmpdir location so this will need to be changed.

Here is how you get MySQL to use a 1G size tmpfs. How you size your tmpfs depends how much ram your system has and how much tmpdir space mysql needs for your workload. If you need more tmpdir space than you can make in a tmpfs mount then mysql allows multiple tmpdir locations …