I'm having a lot of issues with a dedicated MySQL server and it seems like upgrading to the XtraDB version of InnoDB will probably have a positive effect, but I'm hesitant to get involved with it since I am not really a sysadmin and prefer to stick with things that start with "yum update".
What is the easiest way to get XtraDB installed? Should I use the Percona server? MariaDB? OurDelta? Is there a way to avoid using custom RPMs and sticking to a repo instead?
The current yum version of MySQL is 5.0.xx, whereas a lot of the alternate MySQL builds are based on 5.1.xx. How does this factor in? Do I need to figure out 5.1 on CentOS before working on getting XtraDB in?
For bonus points: Do I need to seriously test XtraDB with my server before implementing it, or is it relatively safe to have the brief downtime for switching servers followed by putting the site back online with XtraDB?
You can add the Percona Yum Repository acording to this
http://www.percona.com/docs/wiki/percona-server:release:start
to your CentOS system
backup your Databases. You can uninstall your actual MySQL version, install the next packages:
Percona-Server-server-51 Percona-Server-client-51
and restore your Databases
or you can try to update directly your databases online (do a previous backup too only in case that the update screw your data)
ready! you can use now the Percona MySQL version with XtraDB :)
4 years later I will answer my own question! It seems at some point MariaDB HQ started offering Yum repos you can install inside CentOS to automate updates :)
Here' a general description:
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/documentation/getting-started/binary-packages/rpm/yum/
Here's a page that lets you generate the Yum config code for your exact CentOS+MariaDB version:
https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/
I tested and it seems to work, it is even willing to upgrade the RPM-installed version of MariaDB that I had from my previous solution.