There are times when you’d rather not replicate all the data from a master to its slave(s). For instance, your master database server may contain test or pre-production databases and typically these databases, much like the /tmp directory on Linux, really don’t need to survive after a disaster. Rather than wasting the bandwidth and disk space to replicate them, you can tell MySQL to simply ignore them. You can accomplish this by adding one or more configuration directives to the my.cnf file on the master.

In a previous life I wanted to be a DBA so this stuff always fascinated me. I loved to read about how Amazon, Yahoo, and Google tweaked databases to their maximum potential and kept on going without any limit in site. Maybe when I become a millionaire I will once again relive my dream of becoming a DBA. For now I will just read articles preparing and awaiting that fateful day.