Oracle + Open Source » Sean Hull

DBJ – Mult-master MySQL Improves Manageability

Sean Hull — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:00:32 +0000

Multi-master MySQL, with the MMM management software brings a whole host of new features, and manageability to your MySQL deployments. Run backups, alter tables, perform upgrades all without slowing down your production users.

DBJ: Introduction to Multi-Master MySQL

Sean Hull — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:00:10 +0000

This month on Database Journal we talk about multi-master MySQL using circular replication to achieve high availability.

iHeavy Insights 69 – Fewer Moving Parts

Sean Hull — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:00:57 +0000

In this month’s newsletter we talk about the advantages that come from simplicity in design. This holds true for extreme sports like sky diving or rock climbing, as much as it holds for user interface designs on smartphones like the iphone, or internet infrastructure and operations.

DBJ: More Maatkit

Sean Hull — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:00:05 +0000

In this month’s article we discuss Maatkit again, following up on our previous article last month. There are a whole host of backup and administrative tools including some to dump in parallel, search for tables, search for queries based on criteria and more.

Even More Maatkit at Database Journal

DBJ – Wonders of Maatkit for MySQL

Sean Hull — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:00:38 +0000

If you’re new to the MySQL DBA role, you’ll be excited to learn about the Maatkit toolset. It provides a whole host of valuable functionality and fills many of the DBAs day-to-day needs.

DatabaseJournal – Wonders of Maatkit

iHeavy Insights 67 – Golden Rule In Business

Sean Hull — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:00:13 +0000

If you’ve ever worked with someone who is more on the abrasive side, you probably know how unpleasant it can make business. The truth is when it comes to the people you work with everyday, it’s important to be a great person to work with. This doesn’t mean not speaking your mind, but it means doing so in a way that doesn’t step on toes. A pleasure doing business with you – carries more weight than we might often think.

Newsletter 67 – Golden Rule In Business

DBJ – Exotic Storage Engines for MySQL

Sean Hull — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:00:23 +0000

In our March DBJ article we talked about some of the storage engines to choose from with MySQL. With it’s plugin storage engine architecture, you have a range of options. In our April article we continue to discuss a further selection of storage engines, and what features they offer to the DBA and database architect.

Database Journal – Exotic Storage Engines

iHeavy Insights 66 – Needs & Wants

Sean Hull — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:00:24 +0000

Customers and consultants often have wildly different views of a business solution. Consultants may see the devil in the details, how all the gears line up, and what each piece does. The customer very clearly sees their business needs. The trick is for the consultant to be able to translate needs to wants, and articulate that solution in a way that expresses the value to the business. All that, and without getting tripped up on complex jargon, and too much technical detail.

iHeavy Insights 66 – Needs and Wants

Surveying MySQL’s Popular Storage Engines

Sean Hull — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:35 +0000

In this month’s Database Journal piece we look at the spectrum of MySQL storage engines available, and examine what some of their strengths and weaknesses are.

View the article here: Survey of MySQL Storage Engines

iHeavy Insights 65 – How Many Hats

Sean Hull — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:00:42 +0000

What’s your strongest suit? You may have heard the question before. It’s a simple and seemingly innocuous question, however by labeling and simplifying our skillset, we subtly pigeonhole our expertise unnecessarily. Perhaps a better question might be “How many hats can you wear?”, or “Are you a jack of all trades?”.

This month’s newsletter ponders this topic to present a different perspective on subject matter expertise.

iHeavy Insights 65 – How Many Hats?

webcast – DRBD & MySQL High Availability

Sean Hull — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:00:53 +0000

I recently presented a webcast hosted by O’Reilly and Webex. In it I take you on a step-by-step installation of DRBD and MySQL. I start by using Sun’s Virtualbox to create to virtual machines running CentOS. I then explain how to configure them with virtual external drives to use for DRBD. I next configure the network interfaces to support routed packets into and out of the boxes. Then I install various packages with yum, configure drbd and finally install MySQL as the last step. You can follow along at the command line and do it yourself on a Windows, Mac or Linux box.

DBJ – Heartbeat Setup

Sean Hull — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:00:52 +0000

In the last of our three part series on MySQL high availability we discuss the Linux Heartbeat project, and how it can be used to automate failover between two MySQL databases.

Heartbeat exposes a virtual IP address for use by the database, and manages it as well. In the event that one server becomes unavailable, Heartbeat will revoke primary control of DRBD from that node, hand over the IP address to the alternate node, mount the DRBD device, and start MySQL. MySQL’s InnoDB engine will then perform crash recovery, rollback uncommitted transactions, and startup.

Read the full article at Database Journal – DRBD & MySQL, Heartbeat Setup

Open Insights 64 – What You Value

Sean Hull — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:16:10 +0000

Our 64th newsletter issue is just out. In it we discuss different perspectives, and how they shape what we value as important. Understanding how each person, each client, each party at the table sees things, and values things differently is the first step in being able to deliver and speak directly to their needs.

View – newsletter 64 – What You Value

open insights 63 – Slow To Credit

Sean Hull — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:00:37 +0000

Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of dealing with their savings or checking account banks. When they deposit a check, the bank is quick to credit, while when they write a check, they are slow to debit. This is a phenomenon of accounting, ie take in money as quickly as possible, but dole it out as slowly as possible. At root it is at the heart of cash flow. In this month’s newsletter we discuss some of the challenges inherent in business as belts are tightened and budgets constrict.

Newsletter Issue 63 – Slow To Credit

DBJ: DRBD & Virtualbox Setup

Sean Hull — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:00:33 +0000

In part two of our article on DRBD and High Availability, we take you step-by-step through setting up Sun’s Virtualbox software, creating a couple of VMs, and then installing CentOS on those. These two virtual Linux boxes then serve as two nodes in our DRBD mirrored disk setup which we use as a platform to install MySQL.

DRBD, MySQL and the Virtualbox Setup – Database Journal

Keep on the lookout for our third part in the series next month. In that issue we’ll explain how the Linux Heartbeat project can be used to control the whole setup, and provide automatic failover in the event that one node goes down.