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MariaDB/MySQL Environment MyEnv 2.0.3 has been released

FromDual has the pleasure to announce the release of the new version 2.0.3 of its popular MariaDB, Galera Cluster and MySQL multi-instance environment MyEnv.

The new MyEnv can be downloaded here. How to install MyEnv is described in the MyEnv Installation Guide.

Query performance comparison between MariaDB ColumnStore and other Storage Engines

Storage Engines like InnoDB, Aria and MyISAM are Row Stores. They store rows one after the other in blocks or even directly in a single file (MyISAM). On the other hand a Column Store like MariaDB ColumnStore stores all the same attributes (columns) of the rows together in chunks.

This is how the table sales_fact looks like:

FromDual Ops Center for MariaDB, MySQL and compatible databases 1.1.0 has been released

FromDual has the pleasure to announce the release of the new version 1.1.0 of its popular FromDual Ops Center focmm, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for MariaDB, MySQL and compatible databases.

The FromDual Ops Center for MariaDB and MySQL (focmm) helps DBA's and System Administrators to better manage their MariaDB, MySQL and compatible databases farms. Ops Center makes DBA and Admins life easier!

Limiting MySQL tmpdir size

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Today a customer gave me the idea of using a separate file as a volume for limiting the MySQL tmpdir size. On some not so well set-up Linux systems the MySQL tmpdir is located under /tmp which is the same mount point as / (root). This can lead to troubles in case the tmpdir is filled up with implicit temporary MyISAM tables which fills up the / (root) directory of the O/S as well.

Do not trust other peoples benchmarks!

Because they do NOT reflect your problems.

One of our customers upgraded last month from MariaDB 10.2 to MariaDB 10.5. In the same change he also converted all his data warehouse (DWH)/BI tables from MyISAM to Aria. An all this, naturally, without testing. And it miserably failed! And then we were under heavy time pressure to make things working again...

What has changed:

MariaDB configuration analysis

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If we do customers database configuration analysis we check on one side if the most important MariaDB server system variables (innodb_buffer_pool_size, ...) are set appropriately but also if some MariaDB server system variables are configured completely wrong.

Fortunately MariaDB introduced in MariaDB 10.1 the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.SYSTEM_VARIABLES view where you can find all the relevant information. But one!

MariaDB or MySQL, that is the question

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Many customers come to us and ask us whether to use MariaDB or MySQL. The answer is not so simple. FromDual is a neutral and vendor independent MariaDB/MySQL consulting company. So we should not have (in the meaning of neutral) a clear preference. For us internally we have chosen our strategy according to some clearly defined criteria. But what we have chosen for us is not necessarily the right choice for you.

MariaDB sql_mode = 'oracle'

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MariaDB has some time ago introduced or reused the sql_mode = 'oracle'. What they basically try to do is to implement a subset of the Oracle PL/SQL language. Because we receive more and more request from customers about MariaDB's Oracle PL/SQL it is worth investigating a bit more in this feature and summarize the state of the art of this topic in this article.

See also our former articles about the MariaDB sql_mode = 'oracle':

MariaDB Galera Cluster with Corosync/Pacemaker VIP

Sometimes customers want to have a very simple Galera Cluster set-up. They do not want to invest into machines and build up the know-how for load balancers in front of the Galera Cluster.

Keep your Galera Cluster up and running by all means

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We see quite often customers complaining that their Galera Cluster is not stable and "crashes" from time to time. As always one has to investigate before rating.

What comes out quite often is that the customer (or better their developers) are running huge transactions.

Databases are standardized but in detail they behave different

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For a fancy application we want to query a chunk of rows from a table and therefore we need the minimum and the maximum of the Primary Key of these rows.

VSZ behaviour with MariaDB MEMORY tables

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We recently had the situation that a customer complained about the Oom killer terminating the MariaDB database instance from time to time. The MariaDB database configuration was sized quit OK (about 50% of RAM was used for the database) but they did not have swap configured.

Traffic mirroring with MariaDB MaxScale

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Recently we had the case that a customer claimed that MariaDB 10.3 Binary Log is using 150% more space on disk than MySQL 5.7 Binary Log. Because I never observed something similar, but to be honest, I did not look to intensively for this situation, we had to do some clarifications.

First we checked the usual variables which could be candidates for such a behaviour:

MariaDB Galera Cluster Upgrade Path

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Because we conduct many customers in MariaDB Galera Cluster upgrades and because these customers sometimes have pretty old MariaDB Galera Cluster set-ups I think it is good to have a rough MariaDB Galera Cluster Upgrade Path.

For an Upgrade Path we have to consider a few things:

How to force InnoDB Buffer Pool flushing

InnoDB tries to keep pages in Buffer Pool to be fast. If a page is changed by a DML statement (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) this change will be done in InnoDB Buffer Pool and not directly on disk. But those changed InnoDB pages residing in InnoDB Buffer Pool must be flushed sooner or later to disk to become persistent. This is done by the InnoDB background writer thread(s) (default 4).

Upgrading from MariaDB 10.4 to MariaDB 10.5 Galera Cluster

Because upgrading from MariaDB 10.4 to MariaDB 10.5 (non-clustered) seems not to be a problem [ 1 ] we take the challenge and try to create a receipt based on the MariaDB 10.3 to MariaDB 10.4 Galera Cluster upgrade documentation [ 3 ]:

Before you start

Before you begin with the upgrade you should consider a few things:

Partial Restore of a Table into a MariaDB Galera Cluster

In my former Blog Post Partial Table or Schema restore from mariabackup full backup we worked out the basics of a partial restore of a table into a MariaDB database instance.

An now we use this know-how to try the same procedure on a Galera Cluster.

The backup is done in the exact same way as described in the mentioned article. We can even use the backup made there.

For the restore we use the following procedure:

MariaDB/MySQL Datenbank-Administrator/in gesucht

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Ausschreibungszeitraum: Q4 2020 bis Q2 2021. Später bitte nicht mehr melden.

Einer unserer Kunden sucht eine/n erfahrene/n MariaDB/MySQL Datenbank-Administrator/in. Arbeitspensum: 80 bis 100% in Festanstellung. Arbeitsort: Hauptstadt Bern (Schweiz).
Erfahrung im Betrieb von MariaDB/MySQL Datenbanken im Enterprise-Umfeld sind erforderlich sowie gute MariaDB/MySQL sowie Galera Cluster Kenntnisse notwendig. Einsatzfeld hochkritische, produktive MariaDB Galera Cluster.

Auszug aus der Original-Stellenausschreibung:

Partial Table or Schema restore from mariabackup full backup

For me it was for a long time not clear if a mariabackup full backup can be used to do partial table or schema restores. Now we faced this challenge with a customer. So time to try it out...

This test was made with MariaDB 10.5.5. So it may not work with some older MariaDB releases...

Backup

Because I do not know during the backup if I need a full or a partial restore I always want to do a full mariabackup backup!

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