Percona white papers present information on a variety of topics, such as in-depth analyses and recommendations for common issues faced by database developers and administrators. The results of our benchmarking tests on software and hardware solutions are also presented. Where appropriate, Percona white papers present best practice recommendations that are based on our in-depth experience developed through working with leading technology users.
A Checklist for Preventing Common But Deadly MySQL® Problems
We created a checklist of common but deadly MySQL problems to make your life easier. If handled reactively, these issues can lead to unacceptable downtime, unnecessary costs, malicious attacks, frustrated users, and lost business. - Read More
MySQL Backup and Recovery Best Practices
Backup and recovery processes are a foundational piece of any application infrastructure. A well-tested backup and recovery system can be the difference between a minor outage and the end of a business. - Read More
Percona Report Measuring ScaleArc with Sysbench
ScaleArc hired Percona to perform various tests on its database traffic management product. This case study is the outcome of the benchmarks carried out by Uday Sawant (ScaleArc) and Peter Boros (Percona). - Read More
High Level Multi-Datacenter MySQL High Availability
This document represents current MySQL high availability best practices. These form the core of what Percona consultants and engineers will typically discuss with customers exploring this space. - Read More
Intel 520 SSD - Sysbench Report
The goal of this benchmark is to show the performance impact of using an Intel 520 SSD drive under a MySQL workload. - Read More
MySQL Performance Analysis with Percona Toolkit and TCP/IP Network Traffic
The TCP network traffic conversation between a client and a MySQL server is a rich source of data for many types of analysis. In this paper, we show how the simplest type of traffic packet headers with no payload can provide a surprising variety of information about the system’s performance. The techniques that we demonstrate are quick, require o - Read More
Virident FlashMAX M1400 MySQL - tpcc-mysql report
The goal of this research is to compare the performance (throughput) of Virident FlashMAX M1400 card with Fusion-io ioDrive Duo 1.28TB card under a tpcc-mysql workload. - Read More
Causes of Downtime in Production MySQL Servers
Everyone wants to prevent database downtime by being proactive, but are measures such as inspecting logs and analyzing SQL really proactive? Although these are worthwhile, they almost always identify problems that already exist. To be truly proactive, one must prevent problems, which requires studying and understanding the reasons for downtime. T - Read More
Preventing MySQL Emergencies
Preventing downtime-causing emergencies in MySQL can be difficult because they are caused by complex combinations of several things going wrong. Efforts to be proactive may be sincere, but without knowledge of the causes of emergencies, they often fail to prevent further problems. This white paper explains dozens of ways that real emergencies coul - Read More
Scaling MySQL Deployments With Percona Server and Virident tachIOn Drives
Until recently, MySQL and InnoDB were unable to take advantage of high-performance hardware, particularly storage systems. Large-scale deployments made heavy use of so-called horizontal scaling with a technique called sharding — partitioning data across many small-to-midsize servers. Today, MySQL — especially Percon - Read More
Configuring Percona Server with XtraDB for Fast Restarts
InnoDB requires a long time to restart on servers with large amounts of memory. It can take many hours to warm InnoDB up enough to serve queries quickly. The database's "working set" of data is not in memory after a restart, so queries must perform random disk I/O to read pages, and are thus too slow for production use. Percona Server with XtraDB g - Read More
Forecasting MySQL Scalability with the Universal Scalability Law
Forecasting a system's scalability limitations can help answer questions such as “will my server handle ten times the existing load?” and “at what point will I need to upgrade my hardware?” Timely answers to these questions have more business value than exact predictions. Mathematical models can help reduce guesswork while - Read More
Percona Server with XtraDB for Software-as-a-Service Application Databases
The Software as a Service (SaaS) deployment model is popular with customers, but SaaS databases are often difficult for providers to manage, due to the unique stresses placed upon them. The open-source MySQL database server can suffer from performance and operational limitations in SaaS deployments. Percona Server with XtraDB is an enhanced versio - Read More
Goal-Driven Performance Optimization
Goal-Driven Performance Optimization is the method we use at Percona to deliver results quickly for our clients. It is a simple, universal process that anyone can use. Benefits include time savings, a defined termination condition, avoidance of distractions, measurable results, and proof when goals are unachievable. - Read More