May 21, 2013

Virident vCache vs. FlashCache: Part 2

This is the second part in a two-part series comparing Virident’s vCache to FlashCache. The first part was focused on usability and feature comparison; in this post, we’ll look at some sysbench test results. Disclosure: The research and testing conducted for this post were sponsored by Virident. First, some background information. All tests were conducted [...]

Tuning InnoDB Concurrency Tickets

InnoDB has an oft-unused parameter innodb_concurrency_tickets that seems widely misunderstood. From the docs: “The number of threads that can enter InnoDB concurrently is determined by the innodb_thread_concurrency variable. A thread is placed in a queue when it tries to enter InnoDB if the number of threads has already reached the concurrency limit. When a thread [...]

Why Swapping is bad for MySQL Performance ?

So you get MySQL or other applications using too much memory on the box or OS behaving funny and using more memory for cache and pushing application to the swap. This causes swapping and causes performance problems. This much is obvious. But how bad is it ? Should you count it same as normal Disk [...]

How multiple disks can benefit for single client workload ?

Let us talk few more about disks. You might have read my previous post and Matt’s Reply and it looks like there are few more things to clarify and explain. Before I get to main topic of the article lets comment on IO vs Disk question. If you look at Disk Based databases all data [...]

MySQL Performance on Memory Appliance

Recently I have had a chance to check out MySQL Performance on “Memory Appliance” by Violin Memory which can be used as extremely high speed storage system. I helped Violin Memory to optimize MySQL for customer workload and Violin memory and also had a chance to do some benchmarks on my own. 2*Quad Core Xeon [...]

Heikki Tuuri Innodb answers – Part I

Its almost a month since I promised Heikki Tuuri to answer Innodb Questions. Heikki is a busy man so I got answers to only some of the questions but as people still poking me about this I decided to publish the answers I have so far. Plus we may get some interesting follow up questions [...]

MySQL Users Conference – Innodb

It might look like it is too late to write about stuff happened at Users Conference but I’m just starting find bits of time from processing accumulated backlog. The Theme of this Users Conference was surely Storage Engines both looking at number of third party storage engine presented, main marketing message – Storage Engine partnership [...]

InnoDB vs MyISAM vs Falcon benchmarks – part 1

Several days ago MySQL AB made new storage engine Falcon available for wide auditory. We cannot miss this event and executed several benchmarks to see how Falcon performs in comparison to InnoDB and MyISAM. The second goal of benchmark was a popular myth that MyISAM is faster than InnoDB in reads, as InnoDB is transactional, [...]

Using LoadAvg for Performance Optimization

Linux and Unixes have excellent metric of system load called “loadavg”. In fact load average is is 3 numbers which correspond to “load average” calculated for one five and 15 minutes. It is computed as exponential moving average so most recent load have more weight in the value than old one. What does Load Average [...]

InnoDB thread concurrency

InnoDB has a mechanism to regulate count of threads working inside InnoDB. innodb_thread_concurrency is variable which set this count, and there are two friendly variables innodb_thread_sleep_delay and innodb_concurrency_tickets. I’ll try to explain how it works. MySQL has pluginable architecture which divides work between mysql common code (parser, optimizer) and storage engine. From storage engine’s point [...]