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!

One good thing about going to the MySQL UC is the fact that you will interact with many people and you benefit from social events in the evenings. In its heyday, I recall you get no more than 4 hours of sleep a night, because you’re busy with people for up to 20 hours a day. Meetings, drinks, the hallway track are also all very interesting. That’s the added value of going to an event besides just the learning.

Monday is open source appreciation day and I know there will be drinks planned on Monday evening (31.03) at least from the CentOS Dojo crew. Tuesday (01.04) brings on the welcome reception (4.30-6.30pm), while Wednesday is the community dinner at Pedro’s (7-10pm). MariaDB.com (SkySQL) has graciously offered to pay the first $500 of the bar bill, and as a Pedro’s regular I can tell you the martinis are pretty good.

Thursday (03.04) is the Community Network Reception (5.30-8.30pm) with the awards and lightning talks, which is a must attend event. While not part of the conference, after the reception I’d personally head over to Taste restaurant for more community bonding.

Friday is sadly the day many of us will leave (I am no exception). I expect to usually be all around the Hyatt as well as at the Evolution Cafe/Bar (hotel bar) which is where lots of conversation happen.

Bits of advice: drink plenty of water. It is costly in the hotel but I’m sure you can be creative with getting a bottle and filling it regularly. Bring some cash – split dinners are hard to do with a credit card, so cash goes a long way. For the non-Americans reading this, have some dollar bills – tipping is customary. Bring plenty of business cards, and carry a notebook + pen in your pocket at all times (you will have long action items post-conference week, I’m sure of it).

I wrote previously about Percona Live Santa Clara 2014, and I want to bring to your attention something Percona has done that is very nice to open source communities: have an open source appreciation day.

Its before the conference (so on Monday), and you get a choice between the CentOS Dojo (great lineup there including many from Red Hat, Monty from MariaDB, and PeterZ from Percona) or the OpenStack Today (another great lineup there). I’d split my time between both the events if time permitted, except I’m flying in on that day.

I can highly recommend going to either as registration (Free) gets you access to the expo hall & keynotes as well. That’s a saving of $75!!!

Remember to register for the conference where the discount code is still SeeMeSpeak. As a bonus, Serg and I have additional talks now, so there will be more MariaDB goodness at the conference. See you next week!

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.