MariaDB Platform vs. Percona Server for MySQL

Our installation scenario is a MariaDB cluster composed of 3 nodes to achieve high availability in the service and in this way the application that accesses the backend (MariaDB) is always working and is not down at any time.

To achieve high performance of the application when accessing the database, a MariaDB MaxScale has been mounted that acts as a proxy for queries to the database.

Incentivized

It is a good tool to carry out tests that measure the level of effectiveness of the database and it behaves well when, at the project level, we need to process large volumes of data in a massive way. It is not an optimal solution for applications oriented to the distribution of data between different machines.

Incentivized

• MariaDB does well with PHP or Python (django) in a web environment. Developers are able to work quickly.
• MariaDB is extremely well documented and has a gigantic support community. If you need ask a question on how to do things you can go to many placces online and find answers quickly.
• MariaDB is fast! Queries with tens of thousands of rows are quick.
• MariaDB is highly compatible with Oracle's MySQL. Basically the same thing but more open and with a brighter future.
• With MariaDB it is so easy to import and export data, and backups are a cinch. This saves me so much time as compared to other RDBMS.

Incentivized

• Feature Rich: Percona Server for MySQL always has some additional features on top of MySQL.
• Performance improvements: Additional performance
• Integration with Native and Community tooling: It supports all native and community developed tooling for MySQL

• Driver Support - Some third party applications use database drivers that cause unexplained slowness with MariaDB. This can be worked around by using the MySQL drivers, but it's not clear what causes the problem in the first place.
• Support - While online communities are helpful in diagnosing problems, there isn't as much professional documentation/support available for MariaDB as some of the other major database options.
• Data Visualization - It would be helpful if there were more built in options for analyzing statistics and generating reports.

Incentivized

• A distributed database offering to scale writes with native sharding. Currently we make use of sharding managed by the application to scale writes. There is the option to place ProxySQL in front of the shards, but we need a true cloud native distributed option with an easy migration path. I would not say this is negative in terms of Percona Server for MySQL, but if Percona had a distributed database offering at some stage, we would follow Percona.

MariaDB is very usable and stable to be used in production settings as an alternative to MySQL. The shortcomings of SQL are present but well understood in the community, and if the decision were to be made again, I would choose MariaDB over MySQL on future projects.

Incentivized

Good community support.

Yes, I would recommend MariaDB Platform support because they answer very fast and with detailed information. They also help you with the design of the storage infrastructure, not only with the maintenance problems. On the other hand, this service is a bit expensive.

Incentivized

We are using opensource so we have not used customer support.

It did not always compete against these technologies. Most of the time, it was complementing these databases for certain use cases to help provide a much more complete database. This makes more users want to use it to explore new solutions that help users. This is our target and how [we] work with MariaDb.

Incentivized

Performance and stability sets Percona Server for MySQL apart from the rest. Percona embraces the upstream version and contributes towards the upstream version making MySQL stronger on two fronts and thus having a much larger community. Many quality contributions have been made by Percona into the base code. Percona provides great tools to support Percona Server for MySQL and this makes the monitoring and management easier

• MariaDB has saved us enormously on licensing compared to our previous DB software vendor.
• In service, it has enabled us (speaking as the internal DB team here) to provide better service to the other teams in the company as well as our customers, with less staff.
• The level of hardware required for adequate performance, in our environment, has been much lower. Those savings have been substantial, above and beyond savings on licensing and DBA staffing levels.

Incentivized

• Increased efficiency with faster querying
• Easy scalability