A few weeks ago, we received an interesting Galera Cluster support case from one of our customers that the application is not working well and they face a lot of troubles in their Galera Cluster setup.

After some investigations, we found a lot of insert queries in state "query end" and lasting for long time without being completed. Also some other queries which were sleeping for long time having the info of "XA COMMIT":

SQL> SHOW PROCESSLIST;

27      user    host:33214      foodmart        Query   14440   sleeping        XA COMMIT 0x31302e31312e31332e34372e746d30303336383030303031,0x31302e31312e31332e34372e746d333638,0x

SQL> SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS;

TRANSACTIONS
============
---TRANSACTION 2DE71D, ACTIVE 14459 sec
9 lock struct(s), heap size 1248, 1 row lock(s), undo log entries 115
MySQL thread id 27, OS thread handle 0x7fc21a42c700, query id 96187 host host-ip foodmart …

It is not clear for many MySQL users that Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) and MariaDB Galera Cluster depend on the same Galera library i.e used in Galera Cluster for MySQL which is provided by Codership team:

• Galera Cluster: MySQL Server (by Oracle) + Galera library.
• Percona XtraDB Cluster: Percona Server + Galera library.
• MariaDB Galera Cluster: MariaDB Server + Galera library.

But the question is, are there any performance differences between the three of them ?

Let's discover that by doing some simple benchmark to test …

One of our customers had a question related to the right value of Galera Cache size (gcache.size) in Galera Cluster for MySQL which I would like to share with you.

The question was: My maintenance window takes 4 hours for my 5TB DB. How can I avoid an SST ?!

Basically, having too small GCache size will lead to SST (Snapshot State Transfer) instead of IST (Incremental State Transfer), thus we can avoid the SST by setting the GCache to the appropriate value.

To check the current value of the GCache size:

mysql> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'wsrep_provider_options'\G
Variable_name: wsrep_provider_options
        Value: base_host = 192.168.1.12;
.
.
.
gcache.page_size = 128M; gcache.size = 128M; gcs.fc_debug = 0;
.
.
.

The value of GCache size could be changed by adding …

Sometimes, it is required to enable the general query log (which is disabled by default). If the general query log is enabled the server writes to this log information when clients connect or disconnect, and each SQL statement received from the client.

The question is, does enabling the general query log affects the MySQL performance ?
Also, it is possible to record the output of this log into either file or table in the mysql database (mysql.general_log), what is the performance impact of each one?

Let's do some simple benchmark for those scenarios to measure the actual impact on the mysql performance.

System Information:

HW configurations:

• CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz).
  • 2 cores, 4 threads, HT enabled.
  …

First of all, I wish you a happy new year.
Many things happened last year, it was really exciting to be involved in the MySQL ecosystem.
I hope this enthusiasm will be increased this year, up to you !

To start the year, I propose the MySQL[plus] Awards 2011
It will only take 5 minutes to fill out these polls.
Answer with your heart first and then with your experience with some of these tools or services.

Polls will be closed January 31, so, vote now !
For “other” answers, please,  let me a comment with details.

Don’t hesitate to submit proposal for tools or services in the comments.
And, please, share these polls !

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, …