Register here:  DRBD and MySQL – An HA Match Made In Heaven

Click here to see a clip over at O’Reilly.

As it turns out there are specific reasons and causes for MySQL replication to get out of sync.  We’ll discuss what is and isn’t compliant in a MySQL Replicated environment, and then most importantly, we’ll discuss a tool that can help you verify your environment, and show you what is or isn’t in sync and why.

I’m presenting this webcast with O’Reilly on Thursday January 22.  If you’re interested, click here to register.

Whenever a publisher releases a 2nd Edition of a book, you know it was well received the first time around.  So that’s a good sign that the material has gotten people buying.  I would say in the computer reference and howto market, that’s a very good indication that the material is well written and relevant.  I certainly found it to be the case with this title.

If you’re looking for a quick & no nonsense howto book on MySQL development, look no further.  The book focuses on Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and Java as examples.  So if you’re doing development, specifically web development, you’ll get a lot out of this title.

Wow, that’s quite a list of authors, but when you look at the material, you see why.  This book is a very indepth look at the MySQL server.  Intended for the intermediate to advanced DBAs and developers who want to know the inner workings of the server, as well as how to use many of it’s advanced features.

For instance the chapter on replication was quite good.  Given that you probably setup replication in five minutes, and are wondering weeks or months later why it’s not working, this chapter will give you some answers.  Using non-deterministic functions?  Mixing MyISAM and InnoDB tables in the same transactions?  Seeing some errors in your slave error log that don’t make sense?  After  finding out that there is something wrong, you may be more surprised that your slave can be out of sync with the master, and not even let you know about it.  The chapter recommends Maatkit’s mk-table-checksum as an assistant to identifying these problems.

All in all the book is superb, so take a look at the review for details, and go get yourself a copy!!

The book covers a wide range of topics, and is one part new features, one part Oracle 101, and one part summary of all of the Oracle products.  It is primarily targeted to DBAs, Developers and System Administrators, albeit on the novice side, however it’s writing style, and technical depth are not unweildy, so IT managers, and business users can surely learn a lot from this book as well.  The writing style is quite good, and overall it is an enjoyable read.

As an independent consultant, there are quite a few trouble spots I see repeatedly. I’ll discuss five of them, and how to avoid them in your own infrastructure.

As an independent consultant for twelve years, I’ve encountered a lot of interesting and challenging projects. I’ll discuss five different cases, and what lessons I took away from each.

1. Intro
2. The Right Hardware
3. Importance of Good Testing
4. Patchwork or Good Design
5. Don’t Mix Opposites
6. Use The Technology
7. Conclusion

Learn how to audit your systems, and run through the right checklists so you can sleep better at night knowing your systems are more secure.

Security is on everyone’s radar these days. You may be wondering yourself whether your database systems are really as secure as they should be. We’ll discuss some of the latest vulnerabilities, and what you can do to protect your systems.

1. Introduction
2. Authentication
3. SQL Injection
4. OS Security
5. Network Security
6. Conclusions

MySQL has a great facility for creating a read-only failover database. We’ll show you how to setup, start, failover, and monitor it.

Setting up MySQL to have a master + slave failover capability might be intimidating, but it needn’t be.

1. Intro
2. Anatomy of MySQL Replication
3. Initial Master copy
4. Setup + starting the slave
5. Failover from Master
6. Adding another slave
7. Monitoring your slave db
8. Conclusions

Inevitably hackers are trying to get at your data, so you mine as well know what they can and can’t do. What better way to discover where you’re vulnerable than hacking your own systems.

Operating Systems have bugs, Database Software has bugs, and so does your application, probably. A better question is how hackable are you? We’ll look at some of the nefarious ways intruders can get in, so you’ll better know how secure your systems really are.

1. Intro
2. OS level
3. Database level
4. Application level
5. Conclusions

Learn to watch your database like a fitness diet. Trim down the SQL queries, use the right hardware, and monitor the right metrics to keep it running fast.

There are healthy databases and their are unhealthy ones. We’ll take a look at what you feed your database, and how to keep it fit with just the right diet of hardware, configuration, and SQL query tuning.

1. Introduction – Diet of a Champion Database
2. Disk, Memory, CPU – Body by Intel
3. Applications – Lean & Fit
4. SQL Queries – High Fiber, Low Fat
5. Conclusions