Getting started with MariaDB on IBM POWER 8

IBM POWER 8 is latest generation of the IBM POWER series, and it's a hot one. Above all, for you reading this, POWER 8 is the most Linux friendly so far and IBM really wants you to try this out. Seveal Linux distributions are supporting POWER 8 now, and MariaDB is of course the database of choise. Some cools things with the POWER 8 architecture are the support for CAPI (google for more details) and the fact that POWER 8 machines, due to a vastly superior memory architecture, can grow in memory size, which in general is good news but if you want your own POWER 8, this makes then a bit expensive (although maybe not when you consider the performance you get). IBM has fixed that recently and have announced the LC series of servers which start at $6.600 (see more here: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/linux-lc.html).

So, whar about MariaDB then? Well, MariaDB is a standard component in the Linux distributions that support IBM POWER 8, but we here at MariaDB didn't stop there. We have made numerous fixes to MariaDB to make it perfom at it's best and to increase stability even more. To get at those nice additions and enhancements though, you have to run with the latest MariaDB versions and use the binary builds we provide, and here I'll show you how to do that.

To begin with, you have to register with MariaDB.com, which is free if you want to try MariaDB Enterprise. So surf to MariaDB.com and you should get something like this:

On the top right, as indicated above, are "Login" and "Sign up" links. Select the last of these two and follow the procedure. Then you can revsit this page and log in, and the the links at the top right now say "Logout", "My Portal" and "Profile". Click on the "My Portal" link and you get to a page that looks like this:

Above is indicated the "Downloads" tab, click on this and you will be taken to a page with many different download sections. In this case, let's assume you are on Ubuntu, then select this:

Now it is time to do the actual installation, just follow the steps listed on the page, as I write this, this means I will run:

wget https://downloads.mariadb.com/enterprise/dnae-wefq/generate/10.0/mariadb-enterprise-repository.deb

 dpkg -i mariadb-enterprise-repository.deb

 sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server

Following all this. MariaDB is now up and running, but I see you asking yourself, what about POWER 8? How do I install MariaDB on that? And fact is, that is exactly what we have dne here. Or Intel x86 for that matter, the procedure is exactky the same, the differences are handles behind the scenes.

Happy power hacking, I will get back soon with a writeup on MaxScale on POWER 8
/Karlsson