Tag: storage

The FEDERATED MySQL Storage Engine

The FEDERATED MySQL storage engine is the coolest thing EVER! Seriously. It’s already saved me from having to do a whole bunch of synchronization coding. I can only imagine how it’ll come in useful in the future.

So, here’s my situation. I have two mysql servers sitting behind a firewall at “location 1”. People at “location 2” need to write some software to connect to both mysql servers at location 1. However, MyODBC gets confused when connecting to the same hostname on two different tcp ports, or so I’m told.

Anyway, since I was basically told that there’s no way to connect to two seperate mysql servers behind one firewall, I got to thinking. So, I set off searching google for method for mirroring data in MySQL and came across the FEDERATED storage engine.

Now, the servers at location 1 are on a VPN with the network at location 3, my location. So, my network (at location 3) can see the network at location 1 without the firewall getting in the way. Since that’s the case here, I can connect to the default mysql port, 3306, on both servers because I can see their LAN IP, where the people at location 2 can’t (no VPN).

So, we’ve got the network flow figured out, now we can go about getting the FEDERATED storage engine in MySQL working. First, you’ll need MySQL 5.x. I chose MySQL 5.0.24 as it’s the latest stable 5.x release.

To enable the FEDERATED storage engine in mysql 5, you must pass the –with-federated-storage-engine option when running configure. That’s pretty much all that’s required to start using the FEDERATED storage engine. Most linux distributions probably have a mysql 5 package that comes with the FEDERATED engine on already, although Slackware does not currently. Continue reading “The FEDERATED MySQL Storage Engine” →

Exclusive OmniDrive Screenshots

Techcrunch has some exclusive screenshots of OmniDrive. OmniDrive is an online storage medium, similar to those thought to be in development by Google and Microsoft.

Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch has been using OmniDrive. Last week they released a client interface for those on Windows systems, in addition to their web-based interface. OmniDrive sounds pretty neat, although it’s still in beta. Apparently they’ll be sending out a few hundred invites each day until they’re open to the public.

They’re also going to release an API to developers, which is really cool:

With the API a developer can either build applications that existing Omnidrive users can use, or they can create their own users and use Omnidrive purely as a backend. The API extends to being more than just saving and retrieving a file with user management, payment management, media handling and the ability for the users of a partner application to use their desktop tools to store, retrieve and access files.

Go head over to Techcrunch to have a look at the screenshots.

Flickr is Back

Flickr is back online after their unexpected downtime. I’m sure they’re still in the process of moving photos to the other datacenter. 20 terabytes is an amazing amount, although the one photo of mine that was unavailable is now displaying just fine.

Anyway, everything seems to be alright over at Flickr now. Wonder who’s gonna win the contest?

Flickr: Unexpected Downtime

The main Flickr site is down, but it looks like all of the relatively new photos are still showing without problems. They had a “temporary storage failure”, which affected about 20 terabytes of older photos. That’s a freakin amazing amount of photos. And to add to that, they’re transferring that 20 terabytes from one of their datacenters to another, a few thousand miles away. That’s some serious data transfer right there, but probably not a whole lot more than Flickr sees on a normal day.

It sounds like they’re gonna be bringing the site back online shortly, just so they’re “up”. They say some photos will be “unavailable”. Those photos will show up once they’ve all made it to the other datacenter. Here’s an update from the Flickr blog:

UPDATE [4:59pm, pacific time (GMT-8)]: Weather report – everything is still cool. We’re going to try to bring the site back online shortly (there will still be photos which appear as unavailable, and they will gradually fill in – no need to do anything on your part, dear user).

In the meantime, Flickr is running a contest. All you need to do is print the circles seen temporarily on the flickr homepage, color them in some neat way, and upload back to flickr once it’s back up. If your “coloring” gets picked you’ll get a free Flickr Pro account:

Because this sucks*, we thought you might like to enter an impromptu competition to win a FREE PRO ACCOUNT!

Just print out this page and colour in the dots. When the site’s back up, take a photo of your creation and post it to Flickr, tagged with “flickrcolourcontest”.

Team Flickr will pick a winner in the next couple of days, and that lucky duck will get a free year of Pro.

I won’t be participating as I purchased my pro account quite some time ago. I miss you Flickr! Please come back soon, I got some new photos for ya!

UPDATE: Looks like they’re having some issues with bringing the site back online, but the photos are still nice and safe:

UPDATE 2 [5:52pm, pacific time (GMT-8)]: We’ve had some issues bringing the site back online without this storage system but everything is still quite safe and we are working hard to get back as soon as humanly possible. One thousand apologies!

UPDATE 2: Looks like Flickr is back.