Suggest a MySQL book for me

Question

I have recently joined a team in my corp office that has mysql as a part of their work profile. Though the mysql work not often in this team, but when they do it comes in big scale. The main mysql technology part that this team works on is High availability. Please do not mix high availability with clustering. Which was the mistake i understaood when i heard this first time. By high availability i mean db replication, master/slave/relay master, etc setup. I won't be doing any query optimization or any of those closely code related STUFF. But more of database administration stuff like looking for replication failures and fixing it and setting up replication, troubleshoot issues maybe like slow query (rarely). Please suggest me a book that concentrates on this part. I have some experince with mysql query language like creating db & tables, looking at tables schema and db priveldges and grants priveldges and backing up and restoring db with mysqldump and writing small select queries and like for mainly find out where it is going wrong or use it in my report generation script from bash command line. I am mainly a bash scripting and apache httpd and tomcat expert and new to this filed. Although the httpd and tomcat have always maintanined a close relation with mysql and db in general . But where i worked previously had huge db and were maintained by a special dedicated team of experts who work solely on db. And that was in oracle and their size was in tera bytes and had advanced structure like oracle rack and real time replications setup, etc and i wan't expected to touch any parts. I was concerating on the app tier and web tier. So can you guys suggest me a way to quickly learn the important stuff of mysql and know the internals or more subtile part as we move on. A book or a online course or a tutorial site. Ah forgot to mention we are using mysql 5 and 4 in some *nix machines. And these are huge setup with lots of machine in many DC. As i said before my primary filed of expertise is bash scripting and web and app layer stuff. So please guide. I am not familiar with windows though worked on AD (and to some extent on SCCM) related stuff for sometime and i am certified RHCE (current and valid). Thanks. ;)

Answer 1

If you are interested in High Availability and Performance for MySQL, then High Performance MySQL : Optimization, Backups, Replication, and More

is definitely the book for you (Third Edition is out now) !!!

I would still have MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide

as well. I used this book as my reference book for 10 months before taking the Certification Exams. In honesty, it has many typos and incorrect facts, all minor in nature.

There is no substitute for Practical Experience. Implement the things leaned from these two books and you will develop the needed confidence to handle,..., no, manhandle MySQL.

If you must use MySQL 4.x, then you will also need MySQL Reference Manual.