Read the original article at Sometimes… let things break a little

Have you ever started a new project, just into it you realize that maybe there aren’t technical problems to solve? It starts to dawn on you the real crux of the problem boils down to people & processes?

It’s happened to me on a number of occasions, but once in particular really stands out for me.

I was working for a firm in the education space, in particular around test preparations.

Asked to automate a publish process

The environment had a mix of relational databases, from SQL*Server to MySQL for some applications. The web facing database however used Oracle on the backend.

Their career DBA was real old guard Oracle, he had …

Read the original article at Oracle DBAs… You Know You Want MySQL!

If you’re an Oracle DBA or developer and considering migrating an application over to MySQL you probably have a lot of questions. Here’s a five minute summary of what you should know. Looking to hire a top flight MySQL DBA? Check out our MySQL interview guide. What is truly delicious o a command line that’s [...]

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

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1. Migrating MySQL to Oracle Guide
2. MySQL Cluster In The Cloud – …

Read the original article at Why I Wrote the Book – Oracle and Open Source

Back in the late 90′s New York City was deep in the dot-com boom. Silicon Alley was being born, and a thousand internet startups were sprouting. Everyone was hiring, it was an exciting time to work in technology!

Trend Spotting Circa 2000

As an independent consultant, I had the opportunity to work at quite a few startups. The technology stack was identical at almost all of them. Sun Microsystems hardware, Apache webservers, and Oracle on the backend. The database was always the sticking point, and developers struggled to get their queries right.

It was an interesting role to hold. Most career DBAs worked …

Read the original article at A CTO Must Never Do This…

A couple years back I was contacted to look at a very strange problem.

The firm ran flash sales. An email goes out at noon, the website traffic explodes for a couple of hours, then settles back down to a trickle.

Of course you might imagine where this is going. During that peak, the MySQL database was brought to its knees. I was asked to do analysis during this peak load, and identify and fix problems. Make it go faster, please!

First day on the job I’m working with a team of outsourced DBAs. I was also working with a sort of swat team chatting on SKYPE, while monitoring the systems closely.

…

Read the original article at Accidental DBA’s Guide to MySQL Management

So you’ve been tasked with managing the MySQL databases in your environment, but you’re not sure where to start.  Here’s the quick & dirty guide. Oh yeah, and for those who love our stuff, take a look to your right. See that subscribe button? Grab our newsletter!

1. Installation

The “yum” tool is your friend.  If you’re using debian, you’ll use apt-get but it’s very similar. You can do a “yum list” to see what packages are available. We prefer to use the Percona distribution of MySQL.  It’s fully compatible with stock MySQL distribution, but usually a bit ahead in terms of tweak and fixes.  Also if …

Read the original article at The Art of Resistance

Sometimes, you have to be the bad guy. Be resistant to change. Here’s a story about how stubbornness pays off. As we’ve written about before A 4 letter word divides Dev & Ops.

I had one experience working as the primary MySQL DBA for an internet startup. Turns out they had Oracle for some applications too. And another DBA just to handle the Oracle stuff.

So it came time for Oracle guy to go on vacation. Suddenly these Oracle systems landed on my shoulders. We reviewed everything in advance, then he bid his goodbyes.

Almost as soon as he was out the door I …

Read the original article at Road War Story – Hacking Inflight Solutions

The 2am phone call

Last summer I got my call from the president at 2am.  Actually it was my former boss at Hollywood Reporter.  I had worked there three months previous, and they had since hired an outsourced DBA solution.  Big outsource, big chops.  And big fail.

12 hours to liftoff

I was scrambling to pack my luggage to go on summer vacation.  I was bound for SF at the moment and my flight was leaving in the morning.  I was trying to wrap up loose ends and my former boss was entreating me – “Can you help us?  …

Read the original article at RDS or MySQL – Ten Use Cases

Amazon’s Relational Database Service is based on MySQL under the hood.  So many colleagues and clients ask me – should I go with RDS or MySQL? As with every technology question, the answer is – it depends.

Here are some scenarios to help you decide.

1. I’m replicating into Amazon from a physical datacenter

A: This setup is common if you’re using Amazon’s VPC or Virtual Private Cloud.  With a router dropped into your datacenter, VPC allows you to extend and spinup virtual instances from Amazon as if they’re sitting in your own existing datacenter.  Great stuff, but you won’t be able to replicate from your existing master MySQL instance to cloud Amazon RDS instances.  To do that, roll your own with MySQL 5.5 or Percona …

Read the original article at What Recession? – New York Tech Hiring Frenzy

According to Crains, New York is digital jobs central.  ZocDoc, Thrillist, Foursquare and 10gen are just a few of the hot shots located at 568 Broadway, a tech hub in Soho.  Each of these firms is looking to double their headcount in the coming year.  Not bad considering the rough shape much of the economy is in.

Don’t Forget the Big Boys

Let’s not forget the huge tech firms that are also on a hiring binge,  Google, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter & Skype are all hiring.  Bloomberg Businessweek describes it literally as …

Read the original article at Best of Guide – Highlights of Our Popular Content

We cherry pick the top 5 most popular posts of various topics we’ve covered in recent months.

• 5 Things Toxic to Scalability

We use a broad brush to highlight the biggest no-nos in web application scalability.

We dig into scalability, steering to the richest areas to focus on.

MySQL on Amazon EC2, the what, how …