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I've been thinking to upgrade to MySQL 5.5 on our Ubuntu production server. As it's a RC already and we don't stress our server too much, I don't expect any problems.

However, it would be good to know if someone tried this already and had to revert back to 5.1 - and why.

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    RC? As in Release Candidate? On a production server? Aren't RCs why we build test/dev environments?
    – jscott
    Nov 2, 2010 at 12:24
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    Big -1 for thinking about running a Release Candidate in Production without justification.
    – Chris S
    Nov 2, 2010 at 12:31
  • All right, perhaps I should have added "on a non-important" production server. The point is that it's used continuously with no big deal when problems arise. Nov 2, 2010 at 12:55
  • if you dont desperate require some specific bug fix/feature then why upgrade? at least wait until it becomes stable before upgrading. Make sure you have good backups and a roll back procedure if things 'hit the fan' Nov 2, 2010 at 13:04
  • In my company we are constantly testing various databases as we are a software company. We use many virtual servers and some physical ones. The line between testing and production is slightly blurred here due to constant changes. I understand you guys are concerned but I basically just wanted to know if anyone used MySQL 5.5 on production, because, yes, some people will do it - and such experience is valuable for me. Thanks for the answers, though. Nov 2, 2010 at 13:13

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In my testing so far on a Windows test server (I know, I know, huge difference! I need to test on the Ubuntu and Debian boxen next) performance has dropped by 50-100% by going to 5.5. At this point, my test bed has a wide range of results but in general: MariaDB 5.1 136sec, MySQL 5.1 170sec, MySQL 5.5 305sec. The only difference between these runs is the removal of skip-locking and the running of mysql_upgrade.exe to update some tables for stored procs on 5.5.

I can't roll it back without a dump and reinstall at this point, which I have done several times.

MySQL 5.5RC is exactly that, a release candidate. That I would vote NO on for now...

Update: MySQL 5.5 on CentOS 5.2 is easily 6 times faster (28sec vs. 170sec) than MySQL 5.1 for our application. I re-ran the tests about 15-20 times, and 5.5 on Linux HAULS! 5.5 completes the same benchmark as above in 28 seconds, give or take a couple. MariaDB is still the winner on Windows unless we can figure out what the deal is with 5.5.

Hardware-wise, the Linux box had it all stacked against it: virtual, only 256MB RAM, local sata disk, completely unoptimized, and still ran away with it. The application has never been faster. Now on to replication!

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Indirect answer: I haven't been burnt by it, but if you care about your data at all (that is, you don't have a quick fallback, real-time backups to a slave, and offline backups), you really don't want to run an RC version for a production server.

Consider waiting several weeks or months before upgrading unless there is some special functionality in 5.5 that you really need today.

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