Saturday, March 22, 2008

MySQL, Blade Servers and Storage

When people think of MySQL they normally think of MySQL running across multiple Intel servers running Red Hat, SuSE or Windows. This is great for small and medium sized organizations. However, adding a number of Intel boxes and dealing with heating, electricity, power and storage is not an ideal scenario for larger organizations.

As MySQL grows in popularity, I believe more organizations are going to look at using blade servers and storage arrays to manage MySQL databases. Will Sun put together a solution that can generate enthusiasm for using Sun Blade Servers and Sun storage solutions. It's kind of funny that I say this. With over twenty years of database and Unix administration experience, to me there is no better operating system for running database servers than Solaris. My personal perspective is that since the days of SunOS, Sun Microsystems has by far the "best" operating system for databases. Does that matter in today's world? I'm not sure.

When you look at Solaris compared to Linux, Solaris is by far the better operating system in my humble opinion. Yet, that does not seem to matter. Linux provides the core functionality people are looking for at the fraction of the cost, so Linux is by far more popular. Actually, this is one way MySQL is gaining market share compared to other proprietary databases. MySQL has the core functionality that people want, at a fraction of the cost of proprietary systems. Other database vendors add more and more functionality, yet this new functionality does not impact the growing popularity of MySQL. Cost is not the only reason MySQL and Linux are popular, yet cost is a strong factor in the popularity equation.

Can Sun package a complete solution with MySQL that can excite the IT industry? This may be one of the key questions for 2008.

1 comment:

blade servers said...

Currently I work for Dell and I think your blog on MySQL, Blade Servers and Storage is really good. In my opinion, blade server is a server chassis housing multiple thin, modular electronic circuit boards, known as server blades.