Author Archives: Otto Kekäläinen
Chromebooks are a breed of very portable and easy-to-use laptops with a Linux-based operating system from Google and hardware available from many manufactures. Chromebooks are very popular in the educational sector due to their low price and the effortlessness to use as they require next to no administration and “just works” all the time.
Despite being based on Linux (just like Android is), the Chromebook OS is a very closed down platform. Google ensures the devices are always safe and security updates are automatically installed, while the user just logs in with their Google account and does not have real root access to the devices (again, similar to Android systems). …
The Debian project announced their 15th release, code name Buster, on July 6th 2019. Debian 10 ships with MariaDB 10.3 and Galera. There is no separate MariaDB Connector C package, but instead MariaDB 10.3 includes MariaDB Connector C 3.0. Like most other popular Linux distributions, Debian prefers MariaDB over the Oracle owned alternative and this is now the second major release of Debian that only ships with MariaDB, and no MySQL at all. Anybody attempting to run apt install mysql-server will end up with MariaDB server instead and any upgrades from older MySQL versions to new MariaDB versions happen seamlessly, just like users have learnt to expect from apt. …
The time has come for me, Otto Kekäläinen, after serving as the CEO of the MariaDB Foundation since January 2015, to step down. The board has already quietly been searching for a new CEO for some months, but no contract has been signed as of yet, so if you are interested in the position, please send an application to jobs@mariadb.org.
This is a good time for a change of leadership. Some 4 years ago when I started in the MariaDB Foundation the MariaDB Server was clearly the underdog compared to it’s biggest rival. Since then we have won major successes and are now well established as the new M in LAMP thanks to our broad uptake in Linux distributions and development environments (such as WAMP, XAMP, VVV etc.), hosting companies boast on their websites that they offer MariaDB and many developers and architects seem to prefer MariaDB due to our reputation of being well built. …
We recently had a chance to test how the Shannon Direct-IO PCIe Flash G3i devices improves the performance of MariaDB. Anybody who cares about I/O performance has noticed that PCIe drives have become readily available in recent years and that they are significantly faster than normal SSD drives connected to the traditional SATA port (not to mention hard disk drives). In addition to being great hardware, the Shannon drives offer an extra boost by having a device driver that supports atomic writes. This means the device guarantees that a write made to it reaches the drive, and thus the MariaDB server does not have to run extra checks like it does on normal hardware.
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Continue reading “Improved MariaDB performance using Shannon Systems PCIe and atomic writes”
The MariaDB Foundation today announces that Tencent Games – online game developer and operator by Tencent Interactive Entertainment – has become a Gold Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation. As one of the world’s largest video game companies, Tencent Games shows the way to the ceaselessly-growing video game industry by supporting the open source development of MariaDB.
The sponsorship will help the Foundation in its mission to ensure continuity and open collaboration in the MariaDB ecosystem, and to drive adoption, serving an ever growing community of users and developers.
Tencent has been actively supporting the open collaboration in MariaDB environment since 2016.
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The MariaDB Foundation is happy to announce that Percona, one of the oldest and most well known open source database support and services companies, has joined as a sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation.
Percona’s ongoing commitment to the open source database community is reflected in several ways, including hosting the Percona Live Open Source Database Conference, participating in meet-ups and webinars, and partnering with other key players in the open source database arena, including Mesosphere, Microsoft and AWS. Sponsorship of the MariaDB Foundation will help the Foundation support continuity and open collaboration in the MariaDB ecosystem, drive adoption, and serve an ever-growing community of users and developers.
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Continue reading “Percona Becomes Bronze Sponsor of MariaDB Foundation”
Here is a quick tip for any developer who might want to test if the latest development version of MariaDB installs/upgrades. Traditionally, developers seem to have a bunch of virtual machines lying around which they use to test MariaDB installation and upgrade related things. Snapshotting virtual images, keeping them up-to-date, starting, stopping etc. takes a lot of time and does not feel very convenient.
A much faster option would be to use pristine Docker images for every test. Docker images however normally only run one process and thus do not simulate a complete operating system and lack vital things like systemd interactions. …
Continue reading “Developer tip: test MariaDB install/upgrade quickly with Docker”
The 2017 accounting for the MariaDB Foundation has been completed and the key figures are:
- Total income: 476,952.38 USD
- Total expenses: 476,952.38 USD
- Net income after adjustments: 153,890.65 USD
Staff costs were about 292 000 USD. Travel costs were only about 30 000 USD. The remaining 23 000 USD is administration (accounting, finances, legal) and other expenses. As some of our staff cost is also administration (mostly the CEO) we can estimate that about 90 % (260k out of 292k) goes to software development related activities (including documentation and packaging), so we are quite efficient on how the funds are used. …
Continue reading “MariaDB Foundation financial report for 2017”