Weekly Snap: MySQL 5.5 GA, Nagios Training 2011 and Xmas Office Fun

13-17 December introduced a new year of Nagios training workshops and celebrated the release of MySQL 5.5 alongside the office Xmas party.
Rebecca gave us the heads up on Nagios training courses for 2011. Starting on 11-14 January, with classes in March, June and September to follow, the Nagios Availability Monitoring workshops equip Nagios newbies with all they need to know to head off into their first implementation. The 4 day training package covers accommodation with wlan access, catering, notebook rental and training materials to take home. Register for the course right away or get more information on the training courses offered at http://www.netways.de/de/units/training/
Bernd got excited about the general availability release of MySQL 5.5, the product of an efficient development process which we’ve previously admired. For him, Oracle’s purchase of SUN Microsystems was no signal of MySQL’s downfall, rather one that signalled the mother company’s new ability to compete against the many small databases such as PostgreSQL, Sybase or MSSQL-Server. The enhanced 5.5 is now proof enough. With an array of optimisations, including the performance of the windows version and 15 fold performance improvement n read/write and Bernd’s favourite – a considerably stable semi-synchronous replication. For more on the latest release, check out the Oracle blog.
Manuela celebrated the arrival of Christmas and the NETWAYS party that accompanied it. Held for the first time before the New Year and for the first time with a Christmas Olympics, the party started under the office tree with a race between a jet, a monster truck, a racing car and a turtle to name a few. Once warmed by Karo’s special ginger lime punch, the then crew headed into the city for a tasty Italian feed with a snowball battle on the way. The party ended with a few karaoke songs and the Olympic runners sent off with the UPS Santa for children in need.