The Problem

Munzee usage increases significantly on weekends. About two years ago, with gameplay ramping up in Germany, Scott Foster, cofounder and vice president of technology at Munzee, found that he needed to be online at 3:00 a.m. Texas time nearly every Sunday morning to fix issues with the company’s MySQL database.

“I’m not a database expert, so we needed to find a permanent solution,” said Foster. “I spoke to our hosting company about a DBA service, but they didn’t have a 24x7 solution. I checked out four other services and felt that Percona best understood our needs."

Percona ExpertOps has provided incredible value. They are always there to monitor the database, fix issues as they arise, and make suggestions for improving performance and availability. And it doesn’t matter what time of day. If we encounter an issue, we Skype chat Percona and within a couple of minutes we’re working on a resolution.”

The Solution

Munzee has been using Percona ExpertOps for over two years and currently runs two MySQL servers in a master/slave relationship. Each QR code scan adds another row to the database. Slow days add 50,000 to 60,000 new rows, and recently, 470,000 new rows were added during a single day. Despite this rapid growth, the database has not experienced any downtime. And when the company recently switched hosting providers, Percona helped configure the new MySQL server. The switch went so smoothly, users were completely unaware of it.

“I trust Percona completely,” added Foster. “If they recommend doing something, I do it. I don’t even have to think about it.”

Key Takeaways

With Percona Percona ExpertOps, Percona experts remotely log into a company’s servers to fix database problems and apply operational best practices to optimize performance and availability. Unlike other remote DBA offerings, Percona ExpertOps is offered for a fixed monthly fee based on deployment size and includes an unlimited number of issues. It also includes all standard DBA services, such as 24x7 monitoring and issue resolution, server backup and verification, proactive tuning and maintenance, configuration of replication, data recovery, and more. 

Performance
When Munzee first began using Percona ExpertOps, the Percona team provided Foster with a list of their 10 worst performing database queries, along with suggestions on how to improve them. Since then, Percona has continued to monitor and improve performance.

“Munzee would literally not be where it is today without Percona,” said Foster. Thanks to Percona monitoring and proactive advice, very few issues ever arise, but when they do Percona administrators are always available within minutes.

“Before Percona, the database was liable to go down at any time. Now we can rapidly scale our business and I really don’t have to worry about the database at all. Sometimes I even go onto Skype chat just to say, ‘hey, I haven’t talked to you guys in a few months, but I’m sure glad you’re there!’”

Greater Value
Percona has eliminated the need for Munzee to hire a full-time database administrator. “Having access to Percona’s deep administration expertise costs far less than a full-time DBA, and it’s an even greater value,” added Foster. “A single full-time DBA can’t work 24 x 7. Percona is always on the job.”

Friendly Administrators
Working with Percona has been highly successful for Munzee and it’s also been fun. “I like Skype chatting with Percona admins from all around the world,” said Foster. “They are very friendly, and when I meet someone new, I can go onto the Percona website and find out where they are located and what they’re interested in. During the last World Cup, I was Skype chatting with an admin who lives in Portugal and we were joking about what teams to root for.”

About Munzee

Headquartered in Texas, Munzee offers the “ultimate 21st century scavenger hunt,” a free-to-play game using QR codes and smartphones. Users place munzees (derived from “Münze,” the German word for “coin”) in physical locations around the world for other users to find. Users score points by finding and scanning existing munzees and by placing new ones. Munzee is currently played in 189 countries by over 190,000 players, and at least one physical munzee is deployed on every continent, including Antarctica. The company has seen particularly strong growth in North America, Australia, and Europe.