Colin Charles Agenda

If you are a MySQL power user in Korea, its well worth joining the Korean MySQL Power User Group. This is a group led by senior DBAs at many Korean companies. From what I gather, there is experience there using MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server and Galera Cluster (many on various 5.5, some on 5.6, and quite a few testing 10.0). No one is using WebScaleSQL (yet?). The discussion group is rather active, and I’ve got a profile there (I get questions translated for me).

This is just a natural evolution of the DBA Dinners that were held once every quarter. Organised by OSS Korea, and sometimes funded by SkySQL, people would eat & drink, while hearing a short message about updates in the MySQL world (usually by me, but we’ve had special guests like Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon; recently we’ve seen appearances by Monty, Patrik Sallner, Michael Carney where mostly all we do then is eat & drink).

So from meetups to getting information online, in a quick fashion. Much hunger for open source in Korea, very smart people working there on services feeding the population (where some even make it outside of the local market). The future of open source in Korea is definitely very bright.

If you use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), you are always given choices of AMIs (by default; there are plenty of other AMIs available for your base-os): Amazon Linux AMI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Server and Ubuntu. In terms of cost, the Amazon Linux AMI is the cheapest, followed by SUSE then RHEL. 

I use EC2 a lot for testing, and recently had to pay a “RHEL tax” as I needed to run a RHEL environment. For most uses I’m sure you can be satisfied by the Amazon Linux AMI. The last numbers suggest Amazon Linux is #2 in terms of usage on EC2.

Anyway, recently Amazon Linux AMI came out with the 2014.03 release (see release notes). You can install MySQL 5.1.73 or MySQL 5.5.36 (the latter makes the most sense today) easily without additional repositories.

The most interesting part of the release notes though? When the 2014.09 release comes out, it would mark 3 years since they’ve gone GA with the Amazon Linux AMI. They are likely to remove MySQL 5.1 (its old and deprecated upstream). And:

We are considering switching from MySQL to MariaDB.

This should be interesting going forward. MariaDB in the EC2 AMI would be a welcome addition naturally. I do wonder if the choice will be offered in RDS too. I will be watching the forums closely

For some months now, there have been some back & forth emails with Matt, one of the senior DBAs behind the popular messaging service, KakaoTalk (yes, they are powered by MariaDB). Today I got some positive information: the book published entirely in the Korean language, titled Real MariaDB is now available.

It covers MariaDB 10.0. Where appropriate, there are also notes on MySQL 5.6 (especially with regards to differences). This is Matt’s fourth MySQL-related book, and there’s a community around it as well. The foreword is written by Monty and I.

If you’re reading the Korean language, this is the manual to read. It should push MariaDB further in this market, and the content is relatively quite advanced covering a lot of optimization explanations, configuration options, etc. At 628 pages, it is much, much better than the Korean translation of the Knowledge base!

I’m looking forward to being at Percona Live Santa Clara 2014 later this year (April 1-4 2014). You should definitely register now. Early bird ends soon, and if you’re looking for a discount, here’s a 10% discount code – SeeMeSpeak. 

SkySQL will have a booth. I’m hoping the DotOrg Pavillions continue, so that MariaDB can have a booth too.

If you want to know about MariaDB 10, come to the complete tutorial given by Ivan Zoratti and me. MariaDB 10 clearly has differences and its worth noting them, and embracing the new features.

I will also speak about Automated MySQL Failover with MHA: Getting Started and Moving Past Its Quirks. There are changes to allow it to work with GTID, there’s a script floating around that has a resource agent for MHA, and there have been even more deployments to talk about. 

I’ll plan my calendar of talks soon, but in the meantime, don’t forget to register now, and there’s a 10% discount – SeeMeSpeak.

The OpenBSD Foundation is raising funds – they’ve got a goal of USD$150,000 (so far they’ve achieved $100,000). A few days ago they had potential trouble keeping the lights on for this secure BSD distribution, and today they’re all set in terms of electricity to power servers and looking for more around project expansion. 

If you dig MariaDB, it’s worth noting that MySQL 5.1.73 ships and the MariaDB branch in the ports tree is currently at MariaDB 10.0.7. Previously they shipped MariaDB 5.5.

Donate to keep the lights on for this secure BSD distribution. Many thanks to Brad Smith for packaging MySQL & MariaDB!

FOSDEM happens this year, February 1&2 2014. This year is a special year as it is the 10th anniversary: great content in the schedule, you must pre-register for dinner (lot’s of wonderful Belgian food & drink), and we have a shared booth in the expo hall.

Read more about the event with a wonderful post by Kenny. Again, much thanks to Liz, dim0, Kenny, Frederic for organising the venue, and the sponsors Oracle/SkySQL/Percona.

SkySQL is well represented: 

1. 13:35-14:05 – MariaDB CONNECT Storage engine – Serge Frezefond
2. 15:35-16:05 – SPIDER Storage Engine – Colin Charles, Stephane Varoqui
3. 18:05-18:35 – OSM data in MySQL – Hartmut Holzgraefe
4. 18:35-19:05 – MaxScale, the Pluggable Router – Massimiliano Pinto, Vilho Raatikka

See you all at the Friday beer event on 31.01.2013!