Running MySQL in AWSThe next generation in RDBMS

Laine Campbell, CEO PalominoDB

Why Amazon Web Services?

Infrastructure as a Service

● No more waiting for hardware.

● No more managing hardware.

● No more aged out hardware.

Why Amazon Web Services?

Elasticity

Why Amazon Web Services?

Financial Considerations● Cloud expenses are opex, not capex - fully

deductible the first year.● Eliminate hardware

inventory.● Reduce costs of

administrators, facilities, network, etc...

Why MySQL?

A Known Quantity● Easy to find developers and operators.● Extensive documentation, community and

tribal knowledge.● Well documented knowledge of bugs, with

multiple vendors supporting, improving and operating. (slowing down on Oracle front)

Why MySQL?

But is it Web Scale?● Scaling patterns are well understood.● With proper tuning and knowledge, can

support the vast majority of workloads.● Relational data is often the right tool for the

right workload. ● Data consistency and recoverability isn't as

optional as many believe.

MySQL Scaling Patterns

Need more transactions?

Vertical Scaling○ Tune your SQL.○ Manage your configs.○ Add MOAR RAM○ Add MOAR DISK○ Add MOAR CPU○ Add of all the things.

MySQL Scaling Patterns

Need more reads?

○ Add Replicas via MySQL Replication○ Add Cache Tier○ Tune your ORM

MySQL Scaling Patterns

Replication Lagging?

○ Functional Partitioning - Break out workloads into separate clusters.

○ Split database schema into multiple schemas - use parallel replication. (5.6, or Tungsten)

○ Stop abusing MySQL! Some workloads don't belong in a relational database! (logs, queues, massive non-transactional reads)

MySQL Scaling Patterns

MySQL Scaling Patterns

Need more writes?

○ Time to shard! Split your data-sets into multiple clusters and scale linearly.

Options for Running MySQL

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

● Choose your instance size.● Choose your major MySQL Version.● Choose from a few topology options.● Choose your parameter configuration.● Choose your region and availability zone.

Your RDS MySQL Master

Stand-Alone or Multi-AZ● Stand-Alone:

○ If it goes away, you must use backups to recover.○ Less expensive than multi-AZ, good for prototyping.○ With replicas, you can use standard failover/replica

promotion.○ Storage up to 1 TB. (auto striping over 300 GB for

higher performance)○ Provisioned IOPs allow for predictable I/O

performance.○ Choose your region and availability zone.

Multi-AZ Failover

● A Highly Available Master:○ Uses synchronous data replication to keep a failover

ready.○ Auto-failover.○ Redundancy for less than 2x the cost.

● The Problems:○ Failover happens more often than you might think.○ Failovers are impacting for up to 30 seconds.○ If relaxing binlog flushes, failovers can disrupt your

replication topology.○ Synchronous replication reduces write capacity.

Multi-AZ Failover

From AWS Blog

MySQL Replicas

● Push Button Replicas○ Rapid deployment of replicas via snapshot.○ Promotion to masters:

■ For non-multi AZ failover.■ For standalone dev/test environments.

● The Problems:○ Builds can cause some load issues on your master.○ Only one built at a time.○ All must be identical.○ No complex replication topologies.

RDS Gotchas● Parameter Groups

○ Must change from Default to use dynamic variables.○ Configuration changes become more complex.

● Limited Access○ No root/super-user access.○ No direct management of replication.○ No access to error logs or binlogs.

● Other Concerns○ Minimal visibility to system issues○ No OS access for diagnostics

Options for Running MySQL

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

● Not Database As a Service● Build your own instances, choosing your

Operating system, compute resources and RAM.

● Multiple Regions, and availability zones within a region for redundancy.

Running MySQL in EC2Storage Options● EC2 comes with ephemeral storage by

default.○ If your instance restarts, you lose the data.○ SSD options available.

● Use Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for persistence.○ EBS volumes can be RAIDed for higher IO

throughput. (not for higher availability)○ Snapshots are a highly desirable backup

mechanism.

Running MySQL in EC2Choosing MySQL● Unlike RDS, you can choose your binaries.

○ MySQL 5.1, 5.5, 5.6, MariaDB, Percona XtraDB, Drizzle.

● Unlike RDS, you can choose your replication topology:○ Standard master/slave○ Master/master○ Tiered replication

● Unlike RDS, you can replicate across regions for disaster recovery.

Running MySQL in EC2● Options for reducing management overhead

○ Roll your own config mgmt via Chef, Puppet, Ansible○ Script it yourself (really?)○ Continuent Tungsten can provide full cluster

management with similar cost of RDS, and none of the RDS gotchas.

Pros of MySQL in EC2● Advanced configurations (topologies,

heterogenous instance types or storage types) allow DBAs to build truly custom solutions.

● Access to the OS, all logs, root user and full management.

● Fewer RDS gotchas (rds specific admin tasks, surprises mid-operation, etc...)

● DBA overhead not as high as you might think for commoditized tasks.

Pros of MySQL in EC2● EC2 Reserved instances can be reused by

non-DB tiers (cache, app, file, etc...) vs. RDS reserved instances which must be MySQL.

● Snapshots allow for easy building of test environments.

● Access to advanced topologies means much less downtime for rolling migrations and upgrades.

● Multi-region disaster recovery.

Pros of MySQL in RDS● RDS push button tasks are super easy and

useful.● Allows DBAs to focus immediately on high

value tasks (sql tuning, data modeling, scaling plans)

● Can help enable developers (can also help them shoot themselves in the foot!)

● No need to build out your own failover mechanisms.

Q&A

Laine Campbell, CEO PalominoDB

http://www.slideshare.net/lainecampbell