New feature: MySQL slow query log 10 Dec 08

As mentioned in my previous post, we’ve got several exciting features for the Brightbox control panel in the pipeline. The latest of these, which we’re releasing today, is the MySQL slow query log. This feature will assist customers in optimising their databases by displaying details of slow queries executed by their MySQL user on our shared cluster.

If the nightly log parser find any slow queries for your user, the data will be added to your list and an alert will be displayed when you login to the control panel.

Clicking the alert, will take you to the main MySQL service page where you will see a list of unacknowledged queries.

Of course, this feature will simply let you know you have a slow query that you should investigate and optimise. How to optimise your database queries is beyond the scope of this blog post :)

New: order upgrades via Control Panel 29 Oct 08

This is something we’ve been promising for a while now, but thanks to some sterling work from Rahoul and Caius, I’m pleased to say that you can now very easily upgrade any of your Brightbox virtual machines via the Control Panel. Simply login, click the “upgrade” link alongside the relevant virtual machine and choose the size of box you wish to upgrade to.

Also, we’ve recently deployed additional server capacity, meaning our lead times for both upgrades and new boxes are now down to original levels.