This book uses the approach of a cookbook. Each recipe provides the reader with easy step-by-step descriptions of the actions necessary to accomplish a specific task. It is designed to present what often appear as extremely complicated techniques as a series of simple-to-follow recipes, allowing readers to achieve high uptimes on their MySQL servers. This book is targeted at system administrators or database administrators who have basic familiarity with Linux, the shell, and MySQL. The typical user will be able to get MySQL installed and working, but needs practical guidance to make it highly available.