Read the original article at Anatomy of a Performance Review

A lot of firms come to us with a specific scalability problem. “Our user base is growing rapidly and the website is falling over!” Or they’re selling more widgets, “Our shopping cart is slowing down and we’re seeing users abandon their purchases”. These are real startup growing pains, so what to do?

We like to take a measured approach with these types of challenges, so we thought it would be helpful to run through a hypothetical scenario and see how we work.

Having trouble with scalability? Check out our 5 things toxic to scalability piece. …

Read the original article at 10 ways I avoid trouble in database operations

1. Avoid destructive commands From time to time I’m working with new recruits and bringing them up to speed in operations. The first thing I emphasize is care with destructive commands. What do I mean here? Well there are all sorts of them. SQL commands such as DROP table & DROP database. But also TRUNCATE [...]

For more articles like these go to Sean Hull's Scalable Startups

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1. 5 Ways to Avoid EC2 Outages
2. 7 Ways to Troubleshoot MySQL
…

Read the original article at Hiring is a numbers game

On a recent twitter chat (#hfchat) I posted some comments about hiring. Some folks were complaining that they had applied to various jobs, and not heard back.

I commented…

Apply for a job and don’t hear back, it’s nothing personal

In today’s market, there are hundreds of job applicants for every position. Sad to say, but that means things become a blur after a while. There’s less chance to sift each candidate and find out who they really are or what they really know. It’s more about keywords, and buzzwords if you must, to get your foot in the door.

But there is a flip side to this coin, which I think many job seekers forget …

Read the original article at Why you should attend Percona Live 2012

What I loved about Percona Live 2011 Last year I was excited to go to Percona Live for the first time in NYC. I arrived just in time to hear Harrison Fisk from Facebook speak about some of the awesome tweaks they’re running with MySQL there. It’s not everyday that you get to hear from [...]

For more articles like these go to Sean Hull's Scalable Startups

No related posts.

Read the original article at Upcoming for Scalable Startups

Just back from the Labor Day holiday, and ready to dive back in.

I thought this would be a great time to outline some of our upcoming topics so here goes…

1. Why Oracle usability sucks

- a rant about Oracle’s weak points

In the meantime take a peek at our piece on why we wrote the book on Oracle & Open Source. We ruminate on trends in the datacenter and take a stab at Oracle’s future.

2. Why relational databases don’t scale

- Is there any such thing as automatic scalability?
- What blocks scalability?
- Are NoSQL databases magic?

Also one of our articles that went viral – …

Read the original article at 31 Essential Blogs for Startups & Scalability

So many blogs, so little time! Here’s our list of the best we’ve found. Currently our favorite reader is Pulse pictured left. Starting to play around with flipboard too.

Nuts & Bolts Technical

Slashdot
One of the original tech blogs, that still covers lots of breaking news, and difficult topics. Very technical, with probing commentary. Beware the actual comments though, as they’re often full of immature and childish rants.

Planet …

Read the original article at 5 Things You Overlooked with MySQL Dumps

1. Point In Time Recovery If you’ve never done point in time recovery, it’s time to take a second look. With a standard mysqldump you restore your database to the time when the backup happened. Only do them once a day, then you can lose as much as 24 hours of data. Enter point-in-time recovery, [...]

For more articles like these go to Sean Hull's Scalable Startups

Related posts:

1. Ten things to remember about MySQL backups
2. Easy MySQL replication with …

Read the original article at Beware the sales wolf in sheep suits

Recently a colleague called me up to get my opinion. Therein lies the eternal drama in organizations, the push & pull between dollars and technology best practices. We had a similar experience with a MySQL deployment, and solution framed by Oracle sales. Battle lines are drawn Clearly the battle lines are drawn now. Between director [...]

For more articles like these go to Sean Hull's Scalable Startups

Related posts:

1. Beware the client
2. Open Insights 22 – Beware of Software …

Read the original article at Juggling apples & oranges in the datacenter

In which a few choice words become one serious accident… The Backstory More than five years ago now, I worked for a shop in the business of news & information around the legal and real estate sectors. It was a fairly large organization with a number of Oracle and MySQL backed applications. The whole place [...]

For more articles like these go to Sean Hull's Scalable Startups

Related posts:

1. Open Insights 02 – Consulting Apples and Oranges
2. …

Read the original article at Opportunity a day – career risk at bay

Free Agent. Stress Test. Avoid Sameness

As the globalization juggernaut rolls on, it continues to create more Detroits. Skills and perspectives quickly become obsolete.

What to do in the face of such change?

Small fires prevent the big burn

So there’s your quick answer. Get the book if you want more!

Some related material: why is it so hard to find a mysql dba?.
Consulting 101 Guide – Finding …