[wp-hackers] Percona Server and WordPress

[Jeremy Clarke]

We switched to http://mariadb.org/ rather than Percona Server, but the
underlying software is almost entirely the same, both are packages of all
the wonderful open-source patches that just don't make it into the core
MySQL. In either case, the really mind-blowing performance gains come from
XtraDB, which is the replacement for the core InnoDB engine of MySQL.

Preparing and implementing the switch was time consuming and there was some
brief downtime while me and an expert figured out the config changes to
make (there are a couple of config variables that needed changing to make
it work right) but otherwise the transition was smooth. No WP related
issues as far as I can tell, it's pretty much totally compatible in terms
of actual SQL.

The performance gains I got were tremendous. Load went from static around 6
to more like 2 and stopped spiking the way it did before. Our upgrade was
from MySQL 5.0.x. to the 5.1.x branch of MariaDB, so the actual MySQL
upgrade could have also played a part, but the change was so drastic I
believe it was XtraDB making the difference (the same kind of improvements
are described for people just switching within a major MySQL branch).

IMHO this is the future of MySQL. I hope the hosts of the world start
switching :)

-- 
Jeremy Clarke • jeremyclarke.org
Code and Design • globalvoicesonline.org