About Percona

Percona

MySQL wasn't using their own InnoDB software that they bought out until 5.5 (5.1 included an older version that they were maintaining themselves)

Oracle bought out MySQL, and has not been improving much on InnoDB

InnoDB was released as a modular plugin, which is how it works in 5.5

Percona forked InnoDB, created ExtraDB

Open-source software (GNU GPL)

MySQL consulting

Row-locking versus table-locking (MyISAM)

Transactional support - atomic commits

Binary logging for replication

Foreign key support

Percona Server - Drop-in replacement for MySQL. Not a MySQL fork. All client applications use the same protocol, so there is no compatability issues.

XtraDB is 100% compliant with InnoDB features and SQL - another drop-in

Extremely easy to setup (less than one hour on initial trial)

Very minor changes to database configuration

Master-master-master setup - three or more masters

Synchronous replication

Can add / remove servers at anytime

Cluster software is using third-party software, not MySQL's codeset

Hot backups – make backups while running server without affecting service

InnoDB locks table while using mysqldump

Throttles backups based on system load

Plugins for Nagios, cacti

Sample configuration file

Ubuntu + Percona + my settings

UTF-8 connections and collations by default

InnoDB tables by default

Strict startup checks – will crash if InnoDB doesn't load

No table caching

Slow query logs (more than one second)

Compatible with existing Ubuntu configurations, drop-in replacement for existing servers (uses native sockets, data directories, transaction log size)

Maintain a 5.1 and a 5.5 release set

Ubuntu repositories

Gentoo ebuild in the works

Migration is as simple as a MySQL upgrade (dump, restore tables)