Interview by Sun TV at MySQL Conference

At the MySQL Conference and Expo, right after my participation in scaling up or scaling out keynote panel, I talked to Sun's Multimedia team about Sun and MySQL in our environment.

Recently, I found the interview on Sun's Multimedia page. The video of my discussion is embedded below:

Fotolog seeks MySQL DBA

Fotolog is seeking a MySQL DBA. You'll be working with me in a fast-paced, small-team-running-a-very-large-scale environment.

About Fotolog.com:
• 14th most trafficked site (Alexa)
• 3rd most active social network (ComScore)
• Parent company: Hi-Media (France)


Duties
• Work with Director of Database Infrastructure to maintain/improve and support a high traffic, fine-tuned, scalable and reliable database environment on a day-to-day basis.
• Pro-active and reactive performance analysis, monitoring, troubleshooting and resolution of issues.
• Optimize and tune contentions within the database environment
• Create logging environment(s) to log usage statistics about the environment
• Regularly monitor and periodically conduct random tests of restoration from backups generated within the environment
• Participate in large storage engine migrations
• Compile/patch/install MySQL
• Work closely with operations, development and product teams to ensure smooth deployment of new iterations and availability of database services.
• Create scripts for monitoring key server utilization indicators using DTrace/Perl etc.
• Migrate production systems from MySQL 4.x to 5.x

Ideal Candidates:
Note: (You’re encouraged to apply even if you are missing a few of these guidelines)
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent
• Minimum 3 years experience with Linux, Unix or Solaris
• Minimum 2 years of MySQL experience in production environment
• Experience with Partitioned architecture(s) and data shards
• Production experience with tuning and administering moderate-large scale mission critical MySQL/InnoDB environments.
• Experience with optimizing InnoDB for both OLTP and DW queries
• Experience with estimating database capacity planning
• Passion for hunting bottlenecks and optimizing IO operations
• Solid experience with both SQL and MySQL internals
• Experience with performance analysis tools for MySQL
• In-depth experience with storage engines
• Experience with backup methodologies for MySQL
• Document best practices and routine procedures
• In-depth knowledge of MySQL tuning parameters and performance strategies
• Experience with MySQL replication
• Excellent communication and problem solving skills with attention to detail without losing the big picture
• Must be a team player as well as able to tackle projects on your own upon assignment.
• Able to handle high stress situations without losing calm and focus.
• Comfortable with carrying a pager and participating in “on call” assignments with other members of the operations team and willing to provide 24/7 escalated on-call support.
• Experience with creating and deploying scripts to automate tasks wherever possible.
• Experience with benchmarking methodologies / tools / best practices
• Experience in supporting MySQL for production / development and QA environment(s).


Bonus
• Experience with storage arrays / 3Par
• Experience with master/master replication
• Experience with Hibernate
• Alumni of MySQL Conference
• Active MySQL community member or Planet MySQL blogger
• MySQL Proxy experience
• Experience with disaster recovery

Note
• You’ll be working at our office on 5th Ave., in New York City. We are just a block away from Union Square. Please note that telecommuting is not an option for this job.


Apply
• Only the candidates themselves should send their resume to fmashraqi at fotolog dot com.

Fotolog crosses 400 million photos!!!

Just a few hours ago, Fotolog crossed the 400,000,000 photos milestone. Considering that free members can only upload one photo a day, that's a lot of dedication by 14.5 million members (and growing).

MySQL and threads: my observation and experience

First: Here's to give an idea of how much traffic our site handles:


I just read the post by Monty Taylor about MySQL and threads which was in response to Curt Monash's post on why not to use MySQL.

As Director of Database Infrastructure for a top 14 Internet destination (according to Alexa), I just wanted to pitch-in with a quick comment.

Monty says, "Try running an top-10 web property with 100+ Oracle databases with a team of 1 DBA and see how long it remains running. I’d be happy to take the challenge of running the same thing on MySQL."

I couldn't agree more. I am a single person at my work working on MySQL. Our MySQL instances handle close to 30,000 queries per second at peak hours. We run MySQL on Solaris 10 with 3Par as our SAN and couldn't be more happier. We are running 64 concurrent InnoDB threads with average of 1000 max connections per server and the results are truly pleasing. For sure, I feel desperate to get some assistance but for now, it is just me managing all our installations. I have been doing that since June 2006 and without MySQL, it would not be possible. So far, I haven't yet come across a similar situation where 1 guy was managing a top 15 web property (traffic-wise) using Oracle.

And what about Curt's remaining points about why not to use MySQL? I will let Roland, a good friend of mine, address that.

Speaking at MySQL Conference 2008

I have been meaning to blog about this for quite some time but time seems to be the most scarce resource in my life.

This year, I will be presenting three sessions at MySQL Conference:

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Disaster Is Inevitable—Are You Prepared?


What’s the worst database disaster you expect to happen? Are you prepared? Does your architecture support quicker recovery or do you have recovery bottlenecks built throughout your architecture? What will happen if InnoDB crashed beyond repair or if you have a massive irrepairable data corruption? What can you do to better prepare for the disaster, when it does happen? Do you have data restoration tools and procedures in place in case you need to resort to extreme measures? Join us in this eye opening, heart-racing, real-life inspired presentation by Fotolog’s Director of Database Infrastructure, Farhan “Frank” Mashraqi” to find out answers to these questions and more.

Optimizing MySQL and InnoDB on Solaris 10 for World's Largest Photo Blogging Community


Fotolog is a top 19 Internet destination with more than 12 million members, 315 million photos and more than 3 billion page views a month. In just a few years Fotolog has become a social phenomenon in Europe and South America. Through modifications to its data architecture, Fotolog was able to serve four times the number of users using the same number of database servers. A non-conventional, hybrid presentation that conveys the importance of scalability, performance tuning and schema optimizations in a practical way.

The Power of Lucene

Lucene is a powerful, high-performance, full-featured text search engine library that is written entirely in Java and provides a technology suitable for all size applications requiring full-text search in heterogeneous environments.

In this presentation, learn how you can use Lucene with MySQL to offer powerful searching capabilities within your application. The presentation will cover installation, usage, optimization of Lucene, and how to interface a Ruby on Rails application with Lucene using a custom Java server. This session is highly recommended for those looking to add full-text cross-platform, database independent search capability to their application.

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Registration is now open. See you all soon!

Hi-Media to acquire Fotolog for approx. $90 million

Today, Hi-Media (HIM.PA), a French publicly traded company, has announced that it is acquiring Fotolog (my employer) for approximately $90 million in a 23% cash and 77% stock transaction.

Hi-Media was founded in 1996 and currently the Hi-Media Network is the French leader in interactive marketing and the third largest in Europe.

Last year, in April, we had 3 million members and 100 million photos. Today, the number is more than 10.5 million. We are also very close to reaching 300 million photos.

"Hi-Media was attracted by Fotolog, which has only just begun converting its strong audience growth into revenues. We think that social networks are one of the pillars of what the Internet is and will be important in the years ahead, especially when underpinned by simple mechanisms. We are also convinced that Hi-Media can benefit substantially from Fotolog’s efforts to generate maximum revenues from its audience thanks to the advertising and micro-payment services that Hi-Media has developed over the past decade. In addition, we believe that the expertise and experience of the Fotolog teams who are joining us will allow us to reinforce and accelerate the development of our publishing division." -- Cyril Zimmermann, CEO of Hi-Media

Like everyone else here, I am excited. I think Fotolog will be a good match for Hi-Media.

More resources:
Official press release
Hi Media acquires Fotolog - Paid Content
Fotolog Acquired by French Ad Network - Om Malik

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For press enquiries, please contact:
New PR Group
Andrei Bogolubov, 917-849-9300
Andrei.Bogolubov at newprgroup.com

Fotolog reaches 10,000,000 member milestone

Today, Fotolog reached the ten million member milestone. As a way of saying thank you, our management has decided to give free reverse friend/favorites feature to all Fotolog members. Now, you can see who has added your Fotolog to their friend/favorite list.

MySQL's The 12 Days of Scale Out

Note: My views are just that: mine and not employer's
MySQL's new series The 12 Days of Scale Out received some very positive criticism from Jeremy Cole and Kevin Burton. MySQL was very quick to act on the opportunity and launch a section primarily targeted towards CIOs, a move that I applaud.

I wish a certain division to be made in the training courses as well where I felt that quite a lot of time is spent on giving marketing messages rather than provide meaty training. Don't take me wrong, there is stuff to be learned however the content has a lot of room for improvement.

The other thing that kind of surprised me is that Fotolog was not included in the 12 Days of Scale Out. Kind of weird since we are a MySQL customer (more on this soon) and deliver more page views than most companies mentioned.


I included Google.co.uk just for fun

Anyway, other exciting news is I just found out that Fotolog is now 20th site on Alexa Global 500 list just below eBay.



Ok, just one more thing. I just completed my first year at Fotolog :)

Five years of Fotolog

Today is Fotolog's 5th birthday. For a quick history of Fotolog, see John Borthwick (CEO) and Adam Seifer's (co-founder) posts.

Fotolog on the rise

I know Alexa is very controversial and we don't like to compare with Flickr, but...

Blue: Fotolog
Red: Flickr
Green: Bebo

We reached 8 million members recently (7 weeks from 7 million) and are currently ranked 18th on Alexa (yeah, I know it jumps around :)).

I added bebo because rumor is that Yahoo! wants to grab it for a cool billion.

MySQL conference ending thoughts and presentation files

Man, I can't believe it's been over a week since I returned from the very great and exciting MySQL conference 2007. I got to meet all my old and new friends. Big Kudos to Jay Pipes and all MySQL'ers who helped make this event possible.

To me, this year's conference was the best ever. Partly because I made the very wise decision of staying at Hyatt so I won't miss a lot. At conferences like these the more you mingle with people, the more you get out of it. I had some amazing conversations with Mark Atwood, Brian Aker, Jay Pipes (I will never forget :)), Jeremy Cole, Eric Bergen, Pascal (Yahoo! France), Beat Vontobel, Markus Popp, Boel (MySQL HR), Christine Fortier, Marc Simony, Govi (Amazon), the "R"s of MySQL (Ronald and Ronald), Sheeri Kritzer, Carsten (certification), Ken Jacobs (Oracle), Kaj Arno, Dean (MySQL Support head), Domas, Kerry Ancheta (MySQL sales guru :)), Baron, Paul Tuckfield, Don MacAskill, Tobias, Peter Zaitsev, Chip Turner, Mark Callaghan and many more cool people. Thank you, everyone.

The sad part is that there wasn't enough time for me to hang out with people as much as I wanted. Oh well, MySQL Camp II is just around the corner in NYC.

I would also never forget the night I went to Denny's and had a Jalapeno burger with Michelle (wife), Jeremy, Adrienne (Mrs. Cole), Liam, Eric, Ronald, Domas and Pascal. It was so much fun.

At the conference, I also got a chance to be a part of MySQL Certification Technical Advisory Board (thanks to Carsten and Roland for having me). There were some excellent ideas and important issues discussed there. Everyone, including Mike Kruckenberg, Collins Charles and Sheeri contributed some excellent suggestions.

The presentation files for my sessions are now available at http://www.mysqlconf.com. Thank you to all those who written me repeatedly and kept reminding me about putting the slides online. I really appreciate your patience. The slides do not make up for the talk so if you find yourself with a question, please feel free to shoot an email. You can find my email address in the header of my blog.

Also, big thanks to Warren Habib, my boss, who was there to provide his support.

- MySQL and Lucene
- Fotolog: Scaling the world's largest photo blogging community (We have now crossed 100 million page views a day and are ranked as the 24th most visited site on the Internet by Alexa.)

For all those who have sent me an email, please bear with me as I will be sending a personal reply to everyone.

Fotolog: Scaling the world's largest photo blogging community

Yesterday my talk about "Scaling the world's largest photo blogging community" went very well and I couldn't be more happier. There were a lot of questions from the audience at the end which made me really happy as it was a clear sign that my presentation wasn't flying over their head :)

Thank you to all those who attended. I will be posting the slides to my talk later tonight (it sucks that blogger doesn't has file upload).