Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
not uncommon to see MySQL deployed at a large scale on FreeBSD. ZFS is also avail-
able on FreeBSD.
Windows is typically used for development and when MySQL is used with desktop
applications. There are enterprise MySQL deployments on Windows, but Unix-like
operating systems are more commonly used for these purposes. While we don't want
to start any debates about operating systems, we will point out that there are no prob-
lems using a heterogeneous environment with MySQL. It's perfectly reasonable to run
your MySQL server on a Unix-like operating system and run Windows on your web
servers, connecting them via the high-quality .NET connector (which is freely available
from MySQL). It's just as easy to connect from Unix to a MySQL server hosted on
Windows as it is to connect to another Unix server.
When you choose an operating system, make sure you install the 64-bit version if you're
using a 64-bit architecture (see
“CPU Architecture” on page 390
).
When it comes to GNU/Linux distributions, personal preference is often the deciding
factor. We think the best policy is to use a distribution explicitly designed for server
applications, as opposed to a desktop distribution. Consider the distribution's lifecycle,
release, and update policies, and check whether vendor support is available. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux is a good-quality, stable distribution; CentOS is a popular (and free)
binary-compatible alternative, but has gained a reputation for lagging behind; Oracle
distributes Oracle Enterprise Linux; and Ubuntu and Debian are popular, too.
Choosing a Filesystem
Your filesystem choices are pretty dependent on your operating system. In many sys-
tems, such as Windows, you really have only one or two choices, and only one (NTFS)
is really viable. GNU/Linux, on the other hand, supports many filesystems.
Many people want to know which filesystems will give the best performance for MySQL
on GNU/Linux, or, even more specifically, which of the choices is best for InnoDB and
which for MyISAM. The benchmarks actually show that most of them are very close
in most respects, but looking to the filesystem for performance is really a distraction.
The filesystem's performance is very workload-specific, and no filesystem is a magic
bullet. Most of the time, a given filesystem won't perform significantly better or worse
than any other filesystem. The exception is if you run into some filesystem limit, such
as how it deals with concurrency, working with many files, fragmentation, and so on.
It's more important to consider crash recovery time and whether you'll run into specific
limits, such as slow performance on directories with many files (a notorious problem
with ext2 and older versions of ext3, but solved in modern versions of ext3 and ext4
with the
dir_index
option). The filesystem you choose is very important in ensuring
your data's safety, so we strongly recommend you don't experiment on production
systems.
