A New Platform Supported

Ever hear of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0? It was released on November the 10th of 2010 . . just over a year ago. In the last couple of days Oracle released the latest version of MySQL Server (5.5.18). Along with the bug fixes, etc they released RPM packages that cover RH EL 6.

Finally. A year later.

Not one given to griping, but really..does it take that long to roll packages for the new version? There were no significant changes in the operating system..in fact the RH EL 5 packages worked on RHEL 6 from my (albeit) limited experience with the combination.

I don't jump onto new versions of operating systems as soon as they come out. I prefer to let others be my beta testers before I put something into production. However, waiting a year seems a bit extreme for this release.

Even so, it's out now so enjoy! Now we have no excuse for not deploying 5.5.

km

R.I.P. Kickfire

If the news/rumor mill  is correct than Kickfire may be down for the count. The website for Kickfire is http://www.kickfire.com but it appears to be down. I spent some time with the Kickfire time several years ago when they were first getting ramped up and I have always thought the core idea was sound. The center of Kickfire's technology was a card that supplied hardware acceleration for SQL queries. It's a phenomenal idea in my opinion. In practice it could provide for some incredible query acceleration.

I don't know enough of the situation to speculate on why Kickfire seems to have failed. I haven't spoken to anyone from Kickfire in almost a year, if not more. Some have speculated it was because the product was built on MySQL. I don't believe that. The market that Kickfire was targeting was not the same as those who download either the community or enterprise version of MySQL. If you think otherwise you don't understand the Kickfire product.

If the rumors/news are true I am saddened for the people who worked there who believed in what they were doing and have been let down.  It doesn't matter if it was a problem with what the product was built upon, failures of executive leadership, or a matter of timing with the poor economy over last few years. I would think it was much more of the economy than anything else.  Regardless of the reasons a once promising technology is now dead. People are out looking for work when times aren't at their best.

I truly hope someone picks up the idea down the road. Remember the old non-accelerated graphics cards from 15 year ago when Windows 95 was all the rage? Rememberhow slow they ran? Now think about a the nice modern Nvidia or ATI GPUs that are powering your Windows 7 desktop now. The difference in power is simply astounding. The promise of Kickfire was that it could bring the same power as those GPUs to your database server.

It might be another 10 years or more before someone can create a true general purpose SQL accelerator card. One that doesn't require specialized knowledge to work with. You don't have to tweak your operating system to truly utilize your graphics card. You just load the appropriate drive (or the operating system loads it during installation) and the GPU is used to its potential. As a DBA I don't want to learn new programming or new query optimization techniques to use a new piece of hardware. I want to plug it in and benefit from it.

Just my two cents.

keith

Query cache != bad!!

*** I wrote this in late September last year and it has languished in my draft folder. Man, I should pay more attention to such things!! Sorry for the delay.

A couple of people have written lately about the query cache.

Konstantin wrote here Marc wrote here.

Konstantin believes the query cache should be removed from the server. Mark didn't make any recommendations one way or the other -- although he did post tests that show that the performance can fluctuate quite a bit according to version. While I would absolutely say you should monitor and test your setup there are cases where it can make a dramatic difference. I just looked at a configuration on a client's server where the query cache was enabled and serving over 3,000 queries a second from cache. Yes, from cache. In the same week I have seen another client's configuration where the query cache was slowing things up and I recommended that the QC be turned off.

As with all configuration changes you make to a server, you should always monitor the results of the change. The results of your changes may or may not be what you expect. I for one would say the QC should stay right where it is .. turned off by default and available for your use if you so desire. Additional intelligence built into the query cache would be nice but it is useful in many cases as is.

Online MySQL Backup and Restoration Training Class Full!

I just wanted to let everyone know that due to the great response I have received the training class scheduled for January the 13th is full. I will planning on a training class with a different topic probably in March or April but if there is enough response I will redo the Backup and Restoration class in 2010.

thanks,

keith

FREE Online Training Class on MySQL Backups for Database Administrators

On January the 13th at 8:00 pm Eastern time I will be holding a free online training session on what I consider to be the single most important topic for any database administrator - backups/restorations. While many other topics might be  more sexy, nothing else matters if a database gets dropped for some reason or the server has a hardware failure. Never happened to you before? Well, stick around long enough as a database administrator and it will! And when stuff hits the fan you better be able to pull a good backup out and restore it in a timely manner. The class will run for approximately 2.5 - 3.0 hours and will cover a variety of methods used for backups and restores and the preparations needed for developing and executing a backup/restoration policy.

This will be hands-on training . . . not just a running through a slide deck. I learn by doing something and not just seeing  it so I structure my training around this methodology. While training like this takes more time in both preparation and execution it is well worth it in terms of retention of material.

There are a very limited number of seats available so I need you let me know you are going to attend. Please RSVP to bmurphy AT paragon-cs.com with the subject "Backup Training Online Class".

thanks,

keith