MySQL

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that’s popular for its performance, ease of use, and extensive ecosystem. This guide walks you through running MySQL on an Archil disk. MySQL doesn’t need to know anything about Archil or S3 — it just reads and writes files to its data directory as usual. By pointing that data directory at an Archil mount, you get:

Elastic storage: no need to provision or resize disks as your database grows
S3 durability: all data is automatically synchronized to S3 in the background
Pay for what you use: you’re only billed for active data, not provisioned capacity
Portability: unmount from one server and mount on another to move your database

Create an Archil disk

First, follow the Archil Getting Started Guide to create an Archil disk.

Install MySQL

The exact instructions for installing MySQL will vary depending on your operating system. For example, on Amazon Linux 2023, you can install MySQL with the following commands:

# Download the MySQL community Yum repository
sudo wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql80-community-release-el9-1.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install -y mysql80-community-release-el9-1.noarch.rpm

# Import the MySQL GPG key
sudo rpm --import https://repo.mysql.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-mysql-2023

# Install MySQL
sudo dnf install -y mysql-community-server mysql-community-client

Mount your Archil disk to an easy to access directory.

# Mount Archil disk
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/archil
export ARCHIL_MOUNT_TOKEN="<token>"
sudo --preserve-env=ARCHIL_MOUNT_TOKEN archil mount <disk-name> /mnt/archil --region aws-us-east-1

# Create the directory for MySQL data
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/archil/mysql
sudo chown -R mysql:mysql /mnt/archil/mysql

Set the MySQL data directory to the Archil disk. Open the file /etc/my.cnf in your favorite editor. Under the [mysqld] section, identify the line that starts with datadir= and edit the path to look like the following:

datadir=/mnt/archil/mysql

Initialize the MySQL database in your data directory, and start the MySQL service.

sudo mysqld --initialize --user=mysql --datadir=/mnt/archil/mysql
sudo systemctl start mysqld

Note the temporary password that was generated for the root user by looking through the initialization log.

sudo grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log

Change your root password to something more secure.

mysql --connect-expired-password -u root -p -e "ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR_NEW_PASSWORD';"

By default, the MySQL password policy requires that you set a password of at least 8 characters that contains at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character.

Validate that MySQL is running on Archil by executing the following command, logging in with your new password.

mysql -u root -p -e "SELECT @@datadir;"

This should output the data directory you previously set up, /mnt/archil/mysql.

(Optional) Run a benchmark to validate performance

First, download and compile the sysbench tool.

# Install development dependencies for sysbench
sudo dnf groupinstall -y "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install -y mysql-devel openssl-devel glibc-static libstdc++-static

# Download and compile sysbench
git clone https://github.com/akopytov/sysbench.git
cd sysbench
./autogen.sh
./configure
make -j
sudo make install

Create a database and write test data to it.

mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE sbtest;"

sysbench /usr/local/share/sysbench/oltp_read_write.lua \
  --mysql-host=127.0.0.1 \
  --mysql-user=root \
  --mysql-password='YourPassword' \
  --mysql-db=sbtest \
  --tables=4 --table-size=100000 prepare

Finally, run the test:

# Run the sysbench test
sysbench /usr/local/share/sysbench/oltp_read_write.lua \
  --mysql-host=127.0.0.1 \
  --mysql-user=root \
  --mysql-password='YourPassword' \
  --mysql-db=sbtest \
  --threads=4 --time=30 run

# Cleanup the sysbench test
sysbench /usr/local/share/sysbench/oltp_read_write.lua \
  --mysql-host=127.0.0.1 \
  --mysql-user=root \
  --mysql-password='YourPassword' \
  --mysql-db=sbtest cleanup

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Create an Archil disk

Install MySQL

(Optional) Run a benchmark to validate performance

​Create an Archil disk

​Install MySQL

​(Optional) Run a benchmark to validate performance

Create an Archil disk

Install MySQL

(Optional) Run a benchmark to validate performance