MySQL server forks

I’m not sure if this has ever been asked here, but does anyone have any advice on replacing the MySQL server that comes with Interworx with a forked version of MySQL like Percona? I have been using Percona on my home Debian server and it’s been a nice performance boost. Since my hosting provider runs CentOS, I understand there would be some differences in the installation process, however my main question is would Interworx support such a change or even notice a difference? I would love to hear about success or failures from anyone that has tried this with their server.

Thank you!

Hi rehatiel

I’m sorry I’ve never heard of that one but then there’s a lot I would not have.

I’m sure one of interworx guys will post but my thoughts are that interworx is too closely tied to MySQL, so if you tried it, it may break sorry. Even though interworx runs on its own version, I think other components use MySQL.

There is an idea page on interworx website, which you may want to post there interworx.com/ideas and people vote on it, so you never know.

I hope you don’t mind my thoughts

Many thanks

John

Thank you for your reply :slight_smile: I’ll check out the ideas section. I’ve just seen good things since I’ve run Percona on my home machine and wouldn’t mind the performance boost on my web server :slight_smile:

While I haven’t tried replacing the built in MySQL with Percona on IW it should work if you setup it in the same directory (or at least create symbolic links). Percona is a great server and we run it over standard MySQL on none IW setups. Since it supports all the MySQL clients and statements (after all it is MySQL just tweaked) it is transparent to applications like IW.

I know several of our clients are running Percona and MariaDB instead of the stock mysql that comes with InterWorx. They are supposed to be drop in replacements for mysql, so in that sense either should work, but we haven’t confirmed that internally yet. If you’d like a demo license to try it out on a test system, just ask for one here: http://www.interworx.com/interworx-demos/

That would be super freakin’ awesome… :slight_smile: I’ll make the request now. Thank you!

SO I thought I would go ahead and tell everyone my experience in case someone is googling this or looking for a way to do a replacement of the stock MySQL server. Some of the documentation I found was helpful and some not so much.

Here are the steps I took to install Percona on my trial installation provided generously by the Interworx team and with the suggestion of Brett (thank you!)

First off… For the love of all that is holy… Back up your database completely and back up your my.cnf if you’ve made custom changes. I can’t say that my experience will go as smoothly as yours.

Uninstalling mysql SHOULD not delete your databases (that’s what all the documentation says and from my own personal experience)

  1. Follow the instructions on this page for automatic RPM repository installation for CentOS:
    http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-server/5.5/installation/yum_repo.html

When it gets done downloading, it’ll ask you to accept the installation of the repo, just hit yes (this is just the repo, not Percona)

  1. Stop your mysql server to be on the safe side by running: (It also might be a good idea to stop other services too, like apache or any other service that relies on mysql. I didn’t and it worked fine, but ya never know)
    service mysql stop

  2. Remove mysql and mysql-server from your centos installation by performing the following commands:
    yum remove mysql-server
    yum remove mysql

This will remove mysql without removing all the other stuff that interworx has tied to mysql. This differs from this blog (http://www.vps.net/blog/2011/09/22/installing-percona-server-on-centos/) which tells you to run ‘yum remove mysql*’ If you run this, it’ll remove interworx components and will most likely screw your interworx installation all to hell.

  1. After uninstallation, you can safely install Percona by typing:
    yum install Percona-Server-client-55 Percona-Server-server-55

It will ask you a question to install Percona so just use the old Y and let it do its thing.

  1. When it has completed, restart mysql like you would normally do (Percona is just a fork of mysql)
    service mysql start

  2. Pat yourself on the back and take a deep breath… You did it!

Hi rehatiel

Thank you, this is a good run through for install

I’d appreciate if you could update this with how it’s working after a few months of using perconna, as we do not use it, but after reading more about it, looks very interesting.

Many thanks

John

I’ll be happy to :slight_smile: So far so good, no problems. I’ll keep an eye on it and report back later on.

I will say that I have seen a pretty nice speed increase since installing it.

Just a quick update on how things have gone since the update… I’m really impressed with Percona! I’m uploading my performance charts so you can see how much less CPU power Percona uses with the same usage. The small spikes you see are the nightly back ups, but overall performance has been just as quick (if not quicker) and cpu load has been way down!

Weekly

Monthly

I agree Percona is very impressive and tweaked to run far better than vanilla MySQL. Plus Percona offers awesome support if you require professional DBA assistance and don’t have a DBA on staff. We run Percona on all our servers that don’t use a control panel setup, which is most of them in our case.

Thanks for posting your results. :slight_smile:

Smooth sailing…

Well it’s been almost two months since my switch over to Percona and all I can say is… “Wow!” It’s been a huge reduction in CPU usage and even as I add more hosting accounts the performance stays the same with little to no impact on CPU/memory usage. Not sure how they did it, but this fork of mysql runs so much better than the stock.

Would Percona work with R1Soft/Idera serverbackup?

Hi Evanion

I hope you don’t mind but I’m guessing it would given the posts.

However, I am thinking if IW undertake a MySQL upgrade or update, this might change it.

I could be wrong sorry and I’m seriously thinking about trying it

Many thanks

John

[QUOTE=d2d4j;25536]Hi Evanion

I hope you don’t mind but I’m guessing it would given the posts.

However, I am thinking if IW undertake a MySQL upgrade or update, this might change it.

I could be wrong sorry and I’m seriously thinking about trying it

Many thanks

John[/QUOTE]

I would assume the same thing… Since Percona is just a fork of mysql, pretty much everything that works with MySQL should work just fine with Percona. There was no special configuring I had to do with phpmyadmin or any other php/mysql software once I switched to Percona.

Ben