An addition to The Long Tail of “The Long Tail” related blogs

The Long Tail effect of open source has been discussed in several contexts. Some of the interpretations are likely very different from what Chris Anderson intended, but more and more niche needs of a relatively small set of people (which don’t have economies to justify product development by proprietary software companies) are being met by open source software. Witness more than 140,000 projects registered on SourceForge.

Whenever I install Red Hat Linux I am amused by some of the choices available for the language of the operating system - what is different when running a Red Hat box with English(Singapore) vs. English(India)!? It is also heartening to see support for regional languages making computers accessible to even remote villages (which don’t provide economic motivation to proprietary OS providers).

The long tail effect of open source …

I will be talking about backup and recovery of Web applications at SCALE 5x. Characteristics of Web applications create unique requirements for backup and recovery. The talk will discuss open source backup and recovery tools for file systems, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. Conference guru blog provides more information on my session.

I would be happy to meet folks who are interested in Amanda, ZRM for MySQL and open source backups in general before or after the session.

Version 1.1.4 of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, a robust and
intelligent solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases is available
for download at Zmanda downloads page. Changes since 1.1.3 release: * Support for aborting backup runs
* Support for character sets and stored routines
* Bug fixes Take a look at ZRM for MySQL user documentation for more information on how to install and configure it. Find bugs and report them at bugzilla (http://forums.zmanda.com/bugzilla). Feel free to contribute to ZRM for MySQL wiki and …

We just published the results of Amanda usage survey and I want to share my personal observations.One of the most inspiring findings is that 95% of respondents would recommend Amanda to a friend. The Loyalty expert Fred Reichheld would be very impressed with such a result. The overall satisfaction with Amanda is also highlighted by the fact that 70% of respondents have been using Amanda for more than 2 years. People use software for such a long time only if it does the job well. Many users reported that Amanda was up to the task recovering files in most critical situations.

I think it is just great that more than 60% of users provided suggestions for new functionality.

Next week, backup experts from Zmanda, will present a webinar on how you can use ZRM for MySQL to backup your MySQL server remotely over the internet. If you are a ISP or host your own site, you would want to attend this webinar. For that matter, the infromation will be useful for any MySQL dba. This is a technical seminar where we will go through step by step of actually implementing the solution. We already published a detailed white paper on this topic. You can get to that white paper by registering with Zmanda Network.

Hope to see you at the Webinar.

ZRM for MySQL users manual has been rewritten based on user feedback. It is available at ZRM for MySQL wiki

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback. User contributions to the manual are welcome.

We just published a technical document about what to consider for backup and recovery of the remote MySQL server, for example, when your online forums and wiki are located at managed hosting service provider.

For any database backup the primary considerations are the consistency of the backup and impact on users and applications. A backup of the remote MySQL, however, has extra challenges related to:

• network usage
• security, and
• flexibility of recoverability of MySQL data to a different host.

We discuss the trade-offs to consider, and describe how to use Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for several common scenarios. For example, we provide HOWTO for a use case when you want to ensure security of backup data on the wire and at rest.

Version 1.1.3 of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, an enterprise solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases is available for download at Zmanda downloads page.

Changes since 1.1.2 release:
* Supports Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) release
* Works with MySQL enterprise 5.0
* User configuration for custom plugins
* Bug fixes

Documentation is available in ZRM for MySQL wiki. Please use forums to provide feedback on the release.

Thanks to all users for providing valuable feedback as well as finding bugs in earlier
releases

Last month, Paddy gave a great webinar on ZRM for MySQL. The playback is available as part of documentation in Zmanda Network, at no cost. You can register to Zmanda Network here. As a follow-up, we will be hosting a very hands on webinar on configuring ZRM for MySQL this Thursday, the 14th of Decemeber at 10.00 am PST. You can register for this webinar here.

I was talking to a customer yesterday and the customer was surprised that database backups can be used to detect malicious database activity from legitimate users and hackers.

ZRM for MySQL stores MySQL binary logs as part of the database backups. The binary logs provide a good audit trail of all database activity. ZRM for MySQL binary log parsing capability, usually used for selective point in time recovery, can also be used to detect malicious database activity using SQL inspection.

ZRM for MySQL plugin interface allows DBAs to write log parser plugin scripts to track the database activity that they are interested in. For example: the following script can be used to detect deletion of data from the PRODUCTS table in the database. This script …