High Performance MySQL : Optimization, Backups, Replication, Load-Balancing, and More

by Zawodny, Jeremy D.

• ISBN13: 9780596003067
• ISBN10: 0596003064
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Oreilly & Associates Inc

Summary

Now that MySQL has proven to be a robust product for large users, both programmers and administrators want more information on how to get the most out of it. This new book explains how MySQL works "under the hood", helping readers understand why it's fast and, conversely, what can slow it down. Other common requirements for scaling MySQL, such as replication, backups, and load balancing, are also discussed in detail informed by rich experience. In addition to discussing real world problems and solutions, High Performance MySQL exposes good practices for use in larger demanding environments. The authors also discuss MySQL's weaknesses and how to work around them.

Author Biography

Jeremy Zawodny and his two cats moved from Northwest Ohio to Silicon Valley in late 1999 so he could work for Yahoo!--just in time to witness the .com bubble bursting first-hand. He's been at Yahoo!« ever since, helping to put MySQL and other Open Source technologies to use in fun, interesting, and often very big ways. Starting with the popular and high-traffic Yahoo! Finance site, he worked to make MySQL part of the site's core infrastructure in large batch operations as well as real-time feed processing and serving content directly on the site. He then helped to spread "the MySQL religion" to numerous other groups within Yahoo!, including News, Personals, Sports, and Shopping. Nowadays he acts as Yahoo!'s MySQL guru, working with Yahoo!'s many engineering groups to get the most out of their MySQL deployments.

In 2000, he began writing for Linux Magazine and continues to do so today as a columnist and contributing editor. After over a year of active participation on the MySQL mailing list, he got the idea to write a book about MySQL. (How hard could it be, really?) You can still find him answering questions on the list today. Since 2001, Jeremy has been speaking about MySQL at various conferences (O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, PHPCon, The MySQL User Conference, etc.) and user groups in locations as far away as Bangalore, India. His favorite topics are performance tuning, replication, clustering, and backup/recovery. In more recent times, he's rediscovered his love of aviation, earning a Private Pilot Glider license in early 2003. Since then he's spent far too much of his free time flying gliders out of Hollister, California and Truckee, near Lake Tahoe. He hopes to soon earn his Commercial Pilot license and then go on to become a certified flight instructor someday. Occasional MySQL consulting also helps to pay for his flying addiction.

Jeremy rambles almost daily about technology and life in general on his weblog: www.jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/

Derek J. Balling has been a Linux system administrator since 1996. He has helped build and maintain server infrastructure for companies like Yahoo, and institutions like Vassar College. He has also written articles for The Perl Journal and a number of online magazines, and served on the Program Committee for the 2008 LISA (Large Installation System Administration) Conference. He is currently employed as the Data Center Manager for Answers.com.

When not working on computer-related issues, Derek enjoys spending time with his wife Debbie, and their posse of animals (four cats and a dog). He also makes his opinion known on current events or whatever is annoying him lately on his blog at http://blog.megacity.org/.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Back To Basics	p. 1
Binary Versus Compiled-From-Source Installations	p. 2
Configuration Files	p. 4
The SHOW Commands	p. 11
Storage Engines (Table Types)	p. 16
MySQL Architecture	p. 16
Locking and Concurrency	p. 18
Transactions	p. 22
Selecting the Right Engine	p. 29
The Storage Engines	p. 35
Benchmarking	p. 45
The Importance of Benchmarking	p. 46
Benchmarking Strategies	p. 46
Benchmarking Tools	p. 49
Indexes	p. 61
Indexing Basics	p. 61
Index Structures	p. 68
Indexes and Table Types	p. 72
Index Maintenance	p. 76
Query Performance	p. 79
Query Processing Basics	p. 79
Optimizer Features and Oddities	p. 92
Identifying Slow Queries	p. 95
Influencing MySQL with Hints	p. 96
Stupid Query Tricks	p. 98
Server Performance Tuning	p. 103
Performance-Limiting Factors	p. 103
RAID	p. 109
Operating System	p. 113
Techniques	p. 119
Replication	p. 129
Replication Overview	p. 129
Configuring Replication	p. 134
Under the Hood	p. 140
Replication Architectures	p. 144
Administration and Maintenance	p. 148
Common Problems	p. 160
The Future of Replication	p. 164
Load Balancing and High Availability	p. 169
Load Balancing Basics	p. 169
Configuration Issues	p. 174
Cluster Partitioning	p. 179
High Availability	p. 182
Backup and Recovery	p. 187
Why Backups?	p. 187
Considerations and Tradeoffs	p. 189
Tools and Techniques	p. 193
Rolling Your Own Backup Script	p. 199
Security	p. 203
Account Basics	p. 203
The Grant Tables	p. 207
Grant and Revoke	p. 215
Operating System Security	p. 222
Network Security	p. 223
Data Encryption	p. 231
MySQL in a chrooted Environment	p. 235
The SHOW STATUS and SHOW INNODB STATUS Commands	p. 237
mytop	p. 248
phpMyAdmin	p. 257
Index	p. 267
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