Set Up Percona with Simplyblock for Scalable Storage

Percona is a trusted open-source database distribution used by teams running MySQL and PostgreSQL at scale. It’s designed for high availability, performance, and reliability in production environments—especially where replication, backups, and transactional consistency are critical.

But even with Percona’s performance tuning and operational flexibility, the database is only as good as its storage layer. Slow disks or zone-limited volumes can result in lag during replication, delays in crash recovery, and failed backups. Simplyblock eliminates these risks with NVMe-over-TCP storage, which delivers consistent throughput, zone independence, and easy volume management.

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Why Percona Needs Proper Storage

Percona’s popularity comes from its ability to handle demanding workloads with tight uptime requirements. Whether you’re running MySQL with InnoDB or PostgreSQL for analytics, the storage engine is doing heavy lifting in the background—flushing logs, managing replication streams, writing crash-safe checkpoints, and handling high I/O during queries.

When storage falls short, everything slows down. Backups take longer, replication lags, and recovery times increase after failures. Simplyblock avoids these bottlenecks with fast, durable, and scalable volumes that are built for multi-zone high availability and cost-efficient scaling. 

With CLI-driven volume management, simplyblock fits right into any modern ops workflow. For more on how MySQL storage, refer to the MySQL Storage Engine Documentation.

Step 1: Provisioning Simplyblock Volume for Percona

Start by provisioning a volume using simplyblock’s CLI to store Percona’s data and logs:

sbctl pool create percona-pool /dev/nvme0n1

sbctl volume add percona-data 200G percona-pool

sbctl volume connect percona-data

Then, format and mount the volume:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1

mkdir -p /var/lib/mysql

mount /dev/nvme0n1 /var/lib/mysql

To persist the mount:

/dev/nvme0n1 /var/lib/mysql ext4 defaults 0 0

The simplyblock CLI handles volume creation, connection, and scaling without manual provisioning or zone limitations. 

For more information on storage configuration in Percona, check the Percona Documentation for Storage Configuration.

Step 2: Configuring Percona to Use Simplyblock

Once the volume is mounted, configure Percona to use the simplyblock-backed storage.

For MySQL (InnoDB) setups, in /etc/my.cnf:

[mysqld]

datadir=/var/lib/mysql

innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT

innodb_log_file_size=1G

Restart the service:

sudo systemctl restart mysqld

For PostgreSQL setups, update the postgresql.conf and data_directory, then restart:

sudo systemctl restart postgresql

With this setup, your database engine will use high-throughput NVMe storage for data, logs, and recovery files.

Step 3: Scaling Percona Storage Without Downtime

As your database grows, you can increase storage without stopping the service:

sbctl volume resize percona-data 400G

resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1

This is especially useful for Percona workloads in cloud environments or Kubernetes-based platforms where traffic spikes or database size are unpredictable. Scaling happens live, without migrations or delays.

Step 4: Enabling Zone-Resilient HA for Percona

High-availability setups often stretch across availability zones to minimize downtime. But traditional cloud disks are tied to a single zone—so when a node fails or a pod is rescheduled, the database can lose access to its volume.

Simplyblock solves this with zone-independent volumes. Whether you’re running Percona on Kubernetes or VMs, your database will stay connected to its storage, even during failovers or node replacements. It’s built to support multi-zone disaster recovery without complex storage provisioning.

For details on setting up high availability for Percona, see the Percona XtraBackup High Availability Guide.

Step 5: Storage-Level Replication for Extra Durability

Percona supports built-in replication at the application layer. But for added resilience, you can replicate volumes at the storage level using simplyblock:

sbctl volume replicate percona-data –zones=zone-a,zone-b

This adds protection at the infrastructure level, reducing recovery time and minimizing risk of data loss. All replication, monitoring, and operations can be managed using simplyblock’s operation and management toolkit.

Scaling Percona with Simplyblock

Percona is a powerful database engine for high-demand environments—but only when paired with a storage layer that can keep up. Simplyblock provides the speed, availability, and flexibility Percona needs to deliver consistent performance, even under pressure.

With zone-independent volumes, live scaling, and fast replication, simplyblock simplifies how you manage Percona at scale. It’s a natural fit for cloud-native stacks, hybrid environments, and any team that needs reliable storage without the usual complexity.

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