High Performance Mysql

Optimization, Backups, Replication, Load Balancing & More

As users come to depend on MySQL, they find that they have to deal with issues of reliability, scalability, and performance--issues that are not well documented but are critical to a smoothly functioning site. This book is an insider's guide to these little understood topics.

Author Jeremy Zawodny has managed large numbers of MySQL servers for mission-critical work at Yahoo!, maintained years of contacts with the MySQL AB team, and presents regularly at conferences. Jeremy and Derek have spent months experimenting, interviewing major users of MySQL, talking to MySQL AB, benchmarking, and writing some of their own tools in order to produce the information in this book.

In High Performance MySQL you will learn about MySQL indexing and optimization in depth so you can make better use of these key features. You will learn practical replication, backup, and load-balancing strategies with information that goes beyond available tools to discuss their effects in real-life environments. And you'll learn the supporting techniques you need to carry out these tasks, including advanced configuration, benchmarking, and investigating logs.

Topics include:

• A review of configuration and setup options
  
• Storage engines and table types
  
• Benchmarking
  
• Indexes
  
• Query Optimization
  
• Application Design
  
• Server Performance
  
• Replication
  
• Load-balancing
  
• Backup and Recovery
  
• Security

About the Authors
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.

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

Derek J. Balling has been a Perl programmer and UNIX/Linux system administrator since 1996, having helped build two different ISPs from the ground up in the midwestern United States. He spent several years of his career at Yahoo!, working in their Infrastructure Group, where he worked on tools to help improve system uptime. He presently works as a system administrator at Vassar College. He has also written articles for The Perl Journal and a number of online magazines.

When not working on computer-related issues, Derek relaxes with his two cats in his lakeside residence, and has recently taken up the sport of fencing. He also makes his opinion known on current events or whatever is annoying him lately on his blog at http://www.megacity.org/blog/.