If you’ve been tuning your MySQL database and have wondered what effect the innodb_flush_method settings have on write performance, then this information might help. I’ve recently been doing a lot of baseline load tests to show performance differences between localdisk and the new SAN we’re deploying. Since we run InnoDB for everything in production, and writes are very heavy, I decided to run comparison tests between two identical servers to find the best setting for innodb_flush_method. We have the following specs for the hardware:

• Dell R610
• 24 core Intel Xeon X5670 @ 2.93ghz
• 72GB ECC RAM
• Brocade 825 HBA
• Local disk: RAID-10 15K SAS Ext3 (ugh)
• SAN: Oracle 7420 with four Intel Xeon X7550 @ 2.00GHz, 512GB RAM, 2TB read-cache(MLC-SSD), 36GB write cache (SLC-SSD), 3 disk shelves populated with 60x2TB 7200RM SATA drives setup in mirrored format with striped …

It was a long time now that I wanted to run some benchmark tests to understand better the surprises I've met in the past with Linux I/O performance during MySQL benchmarks, and finally it happened last year, but I was able to organize and present my results only now..

My main questions were:

• what is so different with various I/O schedulers in Linux (cfq, noop, deadline) ?..
• what is wrong or right with O_DIRECT on Linux ?..
• what is making XFS more attractive comparing to EXT3/EXT4 ?..

There were already several posts in the past about impact on MySQL performance when one or another Linux I/O layer feature was used (for ex. Domas about I/O schedulers, Vadim regarding TPCC-like …

Previously, I’ve called out years for non-desktop Linux in 2008, Linux in both the low and high-ends of the market in 2009, ‘hidden’ Linux in 2010 and last year, cloud computing in 2011. For 2012, I see continued growth, prevalence, innovation and impact from Linux, thus leading to a 2012 that is dominated by Linux.

I expect to see nothing but continued strength for Linux and …

The reason we are confident that the comparative decline in the use of the GNU GPL family of licenses and the increasing significance of complementary vendors in relation to funding for open source software-related vendors will continue is due to the analysis of our database of more than 400 open source software-related vendors, past and present.

We previously used the database to analyze the engagement of vendors with open source projects for our Control and Community report, plotting the strategies used by the vendors against the year in which they first began to engage with open source projects …

One of the favourite blog topics on CAOS Theory blog over the years has been our quarterly and annual updates on venture capital funding for open source-related businesses, based on our database of over 600 funding deals since January 1997 involving nearly 250 companies, and over $4.8bn.

There are still a few days left for funding deals to be announced in 2011 but it is already clear that 2011 will be a record year. $672.8m has been invested in open source-related vendors in 2011, according to our preliminary figures, an increase of over 48% on 2010, and the highest total amount invested in any year, beating the previous best of $623.6m, raised in 2006.

Following the largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors ever in Q3, Q4 was the second largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors …

SCaLE 10X is the premier Open Source show in Southern California. This year it will feature a MySQL day with top speakers from the MySQL Community. Volunteers run SCaLE and do such an amazing job that they charge only $60 for a full pass. If you are anywhere near Southern California January 20th to the 22nd, you need to be at SCaLE.

SCaLE MySQL Day (Friday) Presentations MySQL Replication (Keith Larson) The MySQL Storage Engines Landscape (Colin Charles) A Closer Look at MySQL Cluster: An Architectural Overview (Max Mether) Playing in the Same Sandbox: MySQL and Oracle (Lynn Ferrante) Care and Feeding of a MySQL Database for Linux Administrators (Dave Stokes) MySQL Update (Dave Stokes)

Solomon Chang is going to present a four hour MySQl Replication Tutorial (but I am unsure of the date) …

There has been no shortage of reaction to HP’s move to make the Linux-based WebOS open source software. Below, I offer some of my thoughts on the meaning for the different players affected.

*What’s it mean for WebOS?
Moving WebOS to open source was best option for HP. It retains some value in the software depending on its involvement. It is also the best fate for the code, rather then being sold or simmered to its IP and patent value or even used as another weapon in the ongoing mobile software patent wars. Still, the move comes amid huge developer and consumer uncertainty for WebOS. Nevertheless, at least WebOS was already in the market with a compelling products, the Palm the Pre, in the modern smartphone market. WebOS will hopefully have a faster path to open source than Symbian since the former is based on Linux. I still think the greatest opportunity for WebOS may be in serving as an …

Funding for BlazeMeter and Digital Reasoning. Red Hat goes unstructured. And more.

# BlazeMeter announced $1.2m in Series A funding and launched the a cloud service for load and performance testing.

# Digital Reasoning announced a second round of funding to help develop its Hadoop-based analytics offering.

# Red Hat announced the availability of Red Hat Storage Software Appliance, based on its recent acquisition of Gluster.

# Red Hat also …

MySQL Workbench 5.2.36 has been released. This release is part of an ongoing effort committed to improving the day to day usability of the product based on accumulated experience from tools such as MySQL Query Browser and input from user feedback.

This specific version was focused on improving usability of the Query Editor. Some of the changes introduced are:

• New, redesigned Query Editor layout. Output messages are always visible while resultsets and the query editor can be resized according to the task at hand. Resultsets are now in the same tab as their generating query editor.
• Several minor changes that make the difference for a frustration-free, comfortable use of the tool. Sidebar sizes, the last selected schema and other state information is now properly remembered between sessions. Keyboard navigation of resultsets has been fixed to properly handle Tab key navigation in all platforms.
• SELECT …

Talend delivers v5. Zentyal raises series A. The TCO of OSS. And more.

# Talend announced version 5 of its data integration suite, adding business process management capabilities via an OEM relationship with BonitaSoft. Yves De Montcheuil explained the name changes in version 5.

# Zentyal closed a series A venture capital funding of over $1m by Open Ocean …