Virtualizing MySQL - The Next Big Step

MySQL is continuing to be a big player in hosting and cloud companies.  Two of MySQL's great features are how light weight it is and it's speed.  This gives MySQL a lot of advantages over other database vendors.  Yet it is also a disadvantage because the other larger database vendors have more infrastructure and tooling that can impact MySQL being chosen as a long term enterprise solution.

This is where the virtualization of MySQL makes so much sense. The features and benefits of virtualization combined with the speed and light footprint of MySQL provides an enterprise database that is an incredible database solution.  Virtualization gives MySQL the following advantages:
 - A common and consistent x86 container that can move from HP, Dell, IBM and any other x86 hardware transparently.
 - Ability to move a MySQL database server in a VM to another physical host with zero down time.
 - If the host the MySQL database server is on crashes, the VM running the MySQL environment will immediately start up on another host.
 - Capability to move the storage for a MySQL database server to another storage platform with zero down time.
 - A failover mirror solution if only one virtual CPU is required.
 - Very fast provisioning and cloning capability.

Virtualizing MySQL adds tremendous agility, availability, elasticity and robustness to all the benefits of the MySQL database platform.  Anyone looking at using MySQL should be using a virtual machine as the default platform for MySQL.

MySQL at Oracle Open World 2011

It's great to see so many presentations and activities surrounding MySQL at Oracle Open World this year.  There are a lot of Dolphins around the conference which is great to see as well.

They MySQL reception Tuesday evening is going to be a great opportunity to get caught up with everyone.

Oracle Open World 2011 - Virtualization Activities

Virtualization is going to be one of the hottest topics at Oracle Open World 2011.   Here is a link to track a number of the virtualization presentations.

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/oow11-focuson-virtualization-485282.pdf

Where the MySQL Users Conference Should Consider Going

The MySQL Users Conference and the Oracle Collaborate Conference both finished last week.   Since that time there has been a pretty significant bitstream discussing where the MySQL Users Conference should go and what is it's future.  Here are a few insights and overviews of MySQL Users Conference:

• http://tinyurl.com/3zr3kbw
• http://tinyurl.com/3kl7x6p
• http://tinyurl.com/y4x3qch
• http://tinyurl.com/3dbaacn

Data in the Cloud - Marten Mickos - A perspective on where open source databases are going.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llO_EFQk3dM&feature=share

The MySQL user community is strong but it now has a lot of different leaders with different perspectives.   Can the MySQL user community generate enough leadership as a community to together take the MySQL users conference further?  Especially since this user community is very independent by nature. 

I believe the MySQL user community should consider trying to become the 4th spoke at the Collaborate 2012 Conference and be the open source section of the conference.  Or to try partnering with the IOUG in increasing the IOUG technical presentations with a large open source section.  It seems like the developers are going to want to have access to the different databases surrounding open source, so it is in the best interest of the open source user community to consider what is best for the group.

It will be interesting to see how the MySQL user community evolves in the next year.

MySQL Growing Faster in the Cloud

It's been amazing to see the growth of MySQL in the cloud.  I'm seeing more customers moving to cloud providers that are offering MySQL platforms running in Virtual Machines.  It's interesting to see the way the cloud providers are configuring and delivering the platforms.  Virtualization is going to continue to be the deployment method for the delivering of systems in the cloud.  There is currently an evolution of best practices as databases are getting deployed in the cloud.