Recently we had couple posts dedicated to performance monitoring, i.e. Color code your performance numbers, Performance Optimization and Six Sigma, so you may understand we consider stability of performance numbers as one of important area for database management. That’s why we decided to add histogram of queries response times into Percona Server, and our software [...]
RAID throughput on FusionIO
Along with maximal possible fsync/sec it is interesting how different software RAID modes affects throughput on FusionIO cards. In short conclusion, RAID10 modes really disappoint me, the detailed numbers to follow. To get numbers I run
1 | sysbench fileio |
test with 16KB page size, random read and writes, 1 and 16 threads, O_DIRECT mode. FusionIO cards are [...]
fsyncs on software raid on FusionIO
As soon as we get couple FusionIO cards, there is question how to join them in single space for database. FusionIO does not provide any mirroring/stripping solutions and totally relies on OS tools there. So for Linux we have software RAID and LVM, I tried to followup on my post How many fsync / sec [...]
More on table_cache
In my previous post I looked into how large table_cache actually can decrease performance. The “miss” path is getting more expensive very quickly as table cache growths so if you’re going to have high miss ratio anyway you’re better off with small table cache. What I have not checked though is how does table_cache (or [...]
How innodb_open_files affects performance
Recently I looked at table_cache sizing which showed larger table cache does not always provides the best performance. So I decided to look at yet another similar variable – innodb_open_files which defines how many files Innodb will keep open while working in innodb_file_per_table mode. Unlike MyISAM Innodb does not have to keep open file descriptor [...]
Tuning for heavy writing workloads
For the my previous post, there was comment to suggest to test db_STRESS benchmark on XtraDB by Dimitri. And I tested and tuned for the benchmark. I will show you the tunings. It should be also tuning procedure for general heavy writing workloads. At first, <tuning peak performance>. The next, <tuning purge operation> to stabilize [...]
Quick comparison of MyISAM, Infobright, and MonetDB
Recently I was doing a little work for a client who has MyISAM tables with many columns (the same one Peter wrote about recently). The client’s performance is suffering in part because of the number of columns, which is over 200. The queries are generally pretty simple (sums of columns), but they’re ad-hoc (can access [...]
How number of columns affects performance ?
It is pretty understood the tables which have long rows tend to be slower than tables with short rows. I was interested to check if the row length is the only thing what matters or if number of columns we have to work with also have an important role. I was interested in peak row [...]
Just do the math!
One of the most typical reasons for performance and scalability problems I encounter is simply failing to do the math. And these are typically bad one because it often leads to implementing architectures which are not up for job they are intended to solve. Let me start with example to make it clear. Lets say [...]
Should you move from MyISAM to Innodb ?
There is significant portion of customers which are still using MyISAM when they come to us, so one of the big questions is when it is feasible to move to Innodb and when staying on MyISAM is preferred ? I generally prefer to see Innodb as the main storage engine because it makes life much [...]

