Wikipedia Scales Out with MySQL
Jun 15th, 23:35 UTC
Open Source Database Helps Power the Free Encyclopedia's Phenomenal Growth
CUPERTINO, Calif. -- June 15, 2007 -- MySQL AB, developer of the world's
most popular open source database, today published a case study on
Wikipedia's
successful use of the MySQL database to help manage its massive popularity.
The winner of the 2005 'MySQL Application of the Year' Award, Wikipedia is
today's featured user in the vendor's "Twelve Days of Scale-Out" educational
initiative. Each day from June 11-22, the MySQL Web site will be
highlighting how many of the world's fastest-growing Web sites and companies
are using the MySQL database to cost-effectively scale-out their online
operations. The campaign is live at www.mysql.com/scaleout.
Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst for Red Monk said, "The notion persists
within many traditional enterprises that once you reach a certain level of
application importance, it's necessary to transition to big, expensive boxes
running big, expensive databases. However, free-thinking members of their
IT staffs are beginning to ask the question: 'What can we learn from Google,
Yahoo, and Wikipedia on how to scale for high growth? "
Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) is the multilingual, Web-based, free
encyclopedia that is produced collaboratively by volunteers. According to
Alexa Traffic Rankings, Wikipedia consistently ranks in the Top Ten
most-visited Web sites in the world. It hosts over 5 million articles in
more than 100 languages. Every day, tens of millions of visitors learn more
about their world -- making nearly a half-million edits and creating
thousands of new entries.
Wikipedia's 'Growing' Challenge
Wikipedia's growth statistics are staggering. The organization has faced
exponential growth on many fronts since its introduction in 2001. These
include:
* Annual visitor growth from less than 50,000 to over 154 million
* Content growth from less than 100 articles to over 5 million
* Contributor growth from less than 100 to over 290,000
Wikipedia expects the growth in content, contributor and user-base to
continue in all directions - and needs a computing infrastructure that will
keep the pace.
Wikipedia's MySQL Scale-Out Solution
This phenomenal growth has put constant technical pressure on the
performance and scalability of the system. Wikipedia is based on the LAMP
stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) and has grown from initially employing a
single shared server to now being a Top Ten site, with more than 20
replicated database servers delivering up-to-date content to visitors.
Additionally, lightweight MySQL instances are spread out on application
servers as a distributed archive solution.
Wikipedia's MySQL databases handle over 25,000 SQL queries per second.
Wikipedia relies upon MySQL replication to scale-out their database
infrastructure and accommodate more visitors, more articles and more
contributors. This architecture also allows them to save significantly on
hardware costs. Since they add new servers only on an incremental,
as-needed basis, they can delay their new hardware purchases until more
powerful machines drop to lower, commodity prices.
What is Scale-Out?
Scale-Out is a modern computing architecture that enables organizations to
improve application performance and scalability on an incremental, as-needed
basis by adding multiple replicated database servers on low-cost commodity
hardware. This is in contrast to a 'Scale-Up' approach, which requires
organizations to make a large up-front investment in more expensive and
complex server hardware and database licenses in order to add capacity.
On June 20, MySQL will be hosting a special worldwide Webinar titled,
"Scale-Out & Replication Best Practices for High-Growth Businesses". To
register for this event, please visit www.mysql.com/scaleoutwebinar.
About MySQL
MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high-performance, affordable
database products. The company's flagship offering is 'MySQL Enterprise', a
comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools,
and premium support services.
MySQL is the world's most popular open source database software, with over
11 million active installations. Many of the world's largest and
fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering
their high-volume Web sites, business-critical systems and packaged
software -- including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent,
Google, Nokia and YouTube.
With headquarters in the United States and Sweden -- and operations around
the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate
customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business model. For more
information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.
# # #
MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries.
Other product or company names mentioned may be the trademarks of their
respective companies.
(Submitted by Martha Jager of Sheeran/Jager Communication)
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