Drupal is nearly universally deployed with MySQL as the backend database. We’ve all heard the NoSQL and NewSQL terms thrown around and there are many interesting new database products available. However, deploying these products is difficult and for a Drupal deployment used to running on MySQL, not always an option.

In this talk, we are going to discuss Akiban and how it can be used as a query accelerator in an existing MySQL environment. Akiban can be deployed as a regular MySQL slave so much of your operational knowledge can be put to good use with Akiban. Problematic queries for MySQL are then directed by Drupal to Akiban instead of to MySQL. This is similar to how queries are off-loaded to a read slave with MySQL replication. However, with Akiban, these problematic queries are not just off-loaded, they are usually executed 10-100 times faster.

This talk will first introduce Akiban including how to get it up and running as a MySQL slave. Then we’ll dive into specific examples of problematic queries in various Drupal deployments and how they can be redirected to Akiban. During this portion of the talk, we’ll also discuss actual customer deployments of Akiban for Drupal, including 1 deployment in the Acquia cloud.