Percona 2020 content and releasesThe Percona team provided the community with some excellent content and several new releases in 2020. I wanted to highlight some of your favorites (based on popularity) if you missed them.

First up is our most-read blog from last year, which ironically was published before 2020. Ananias Tsalouchidis’s blog on when you should use Aurora and when should you use RDS MYSQL continued to attract readers all year long. People don’t always understand the key differences between the two, so having a guide is great and timely for many.

What about the most read blogs or watched videos published in 2020?

PostgreSQL Takes Our Most-Read Spot of 2020

The Percona blog is known for its great in-depth MySQL coverage, but experts in the MongoDB and PostgreSQL space have also written some quality content over the last few years. It is exciting to see that the most popular blog published last year was outside of MySQL: Ibrar Ahmed’s deep dive into handling null values in PostgreSQL.

Interested in the top six PostgreSQL reads from 2020? Here they are:

We also had some fantastic conference talks this year you may want to check out. Here are the most-watched PostgreSQL videos of 2020:

Awesome PostgreSQL talks and blogs from the community:

Our Percona University Online posted its first PostgreSQL training last year; if you are looking for a deeper understanding of indexes (and who isn’t), check out our training, Deep Dive Into PostgreSQL Indexes.

MySQL is Still as Popular as Ever

Even though PostgreSQL took this year’s top spot, not too far behind was a great blog series by our CEO Peter Zaitsev on solving MySQL bottlenecks. His three-part series, 18 things you can do to remove MySQL Bottlenecks caused by high traffic, was not only highly read, but it also spawned one of the most-watched webinars of the year. Scalability and performance are critical to any application and can mean life or death for any application. A vital read and a great link to bookmark for when you have one of those odd performance issues you can not seem to find!

Interested in the top five MySQL reads from 2020? Here they are:

Interested in watching some outstanding MySQL sessions? Check out some of the most-watched MySQL sessions of 2020:

Awesome MySQL talks and blogs from the community:

Our Percona University Online posted its first MySQL training; if you are looking at how to upgrade to MySQL 8, it is worth watching. Check out the training, How to Upgrade to MySQL 8.0.

The Staying Power of MongoDB is Undeniable

MongoDB growth in 2020 was undeniable, which is why it’s no surprise that another one of our top blogs was on MongoDB. Percona most-read tech blog on MongoDB published in 2020 was Vinicius Grippa’s must-read work outlining the best practices for running MongoDB. If you are new or old to MongoDB, it is worth reading and double-checking to ensure you have MongoDB optimized.

Interested in the top five MongoDB reads from 2020? Here they are:

Interested in watching some MongoDB sessions? Check out some of the most-watched MongoDB sessions of 2020:

Awesome MongoDB talks and blogs from the community:

More Popular Blogs and Discussions

Sometimes topics cross databases and delve into general advice. Let’s look at some of the more popular talks and blogs that are not tied to a specific database.

If you like videos, you may want to check out these great Percona Live Sessions from last year:

Other Popular Blogs:

Finally, Some Great Percona Software Released This Year

Here is the list of interesting software changes and news on Percona software in 2020:

Percona Distributions for MongoDB and MySQL:

  • What are Percona distributions? We take the best components from the community and ensure they work together. This way, you know your backup, HA, monitoring, etc., will all work together seamlessly.

Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0 (PXC) was released, with improved performance, scalability, and security. Long sought after features include:

  • Streaming replication to support larger transactions
  • More granular and improved logging and troubleshooting options
  • Multiple system tables help find out more about the state of the cluster state.
  • Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0 now automatically launches the upgrade as needed (even for minor releases), avoiding manual intervention and simplifying operation in the cloud.

Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL 13. Version 13 of PostgreSQL was a leap forward, and our distribution was updated to support all the additional functionality. Better indexing, better performance, and better security! Sign me up!

Percona Monitoring And Management (PMM) jumped forward from 2.2 to 2.13 adding some very cool features like:

  • Alert manager integration and integrated alerting
  • A brand new Query Analyzer with awesome features to allow you to find problem queries quicker and more efficiently
  • Enhanced metrics for AWS RDS monitoring
  • Added support for External Exporters so you can monitor 3rd party and custom services through the installed PMM-agent
  • New security threat tool allows for alerts and visibility into the most common security issues
  • Support for group replication
  • Better MongoDB and PostgreSQL monitoring
  • Better support for larger environments (Monitor More Stuff Faster)
  • Plus a ton of misc small enhancements!

Percona Kubernetes Operator for Percona XtraDB Cluster continued to evolve with several new features helping users build their own DYI DBaaS:

  • Auto-Tuning MySQL Parameters
  • Integration with Percona Monitoring and Management
  • Full data encryption at rest
  • Support for Percona XtraDB Cluster 8.0
  • Support for the latest version of Open Shift and Amazon’s Elastic Container Service
  • Dual support for ProxySQL and HA Proxy
  • Automated minor upgrades
  • Clone backups to set up a new PXC cluster on a different Kubernetes cluster

Percona Kubernetes Operator for Percona Server for MongoDB added several features, including:

  • Support for Percona Server for MongoDB 4.4
  • Automated management of system users
  • Support for the latest version of Open Shift and Amazon’s Elastic Container Service
  • Automated minor upgrades

While 2020 was far from the best year for many of us and we are glad it is behind us, it did generate some good content that we can use in 2021 and going forward to help us better manage and run our databases. Thanks for reading and happy database tuning!