The Linux platform has long been a very popular choice for hosting databases. Given the fact that databases power a large majority of popular websites across the Internet nowadays, this is a very important role for servers to fill. Ubuntu Server is also a very popular choice for this purpose, as its stability is a major benefit to the hosting community. This time around, we'll take a look at MariaDB, a popular fork of MySQL. The goal won't be to provide a full walkthrough of MySQL's syntax (as that would be a full book in and of itself), but we'll focus on setting up and maintaining database servers utilizing MariaDB and we'll even go over how to set up a master/slave relationship between them. If you already have a firm understanding of how to architect databases, you'll still benefit from this chapter as we'll also discuss what sets Ubuntu's implementation apart from other distributions (and there are some fairly sizable differences).
As we work through setting...