May 23, 2013

MySQL 5.6 vs MySQL 5.5 and the Star Schema Benchmark

So far most of the benchmarks posted about MySQL 5.6 use the sysbench OLTP workload.  I wanted to test a set of queries which, unlike sysbench, utilize joins.  I also wanted an easily reproducible set of data which is more rich than the simple sysbench table.  The Star Schema Benchmark (SSB) seems ideal for this. [...]

Replaying database load with Percona Playback

If you are planning to upgrade or make any configuration change on your MySQL database the first advice usually is: – Benchmark! How should we do that benchmark? People usually run generic benchmark tools like sysbench, tpcc or mysqlslap that are good to know the number of transactions per seconds that a database can do [...]

Percona XtraDB Cluster reference architecture with HaProxy

This post is a step-by-step guide to set up Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) in a virtualized test sandbox. I used Amazon EC2 micro instances, but the content here is applicable for any kind of virtualization technology (for example VirtualBox). The goal is to give step by step instructions, so the setup process is understandable and [...]

Why you should ignore MySQL’s key cache hit ratio

I have not caused a fist fight in a while, so it’s time to take off the gloves. I claim that somewhere around of 99% of advice about tuning MySQL’s key cache hit ratio is wrong, even when you hear it from experts. There are two major problems with the key buffer hit ratio, and [...]

5.0.75-build12 Percona binaries

After several important fixes to our patches we made binaries for build12. Fixes include: Control of InnoDB insert buffer to address problems Peter mentioned http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/01/13/some-little-known-facts-about-innodb-insert-buffer/, also check Bug 41811 to see symptoms of problem with Insert buffer. http://www.percona.com/docs/wiki/patches:innodb_io_patches * innodb_flush_neighbor_pages (default 1) – When the dirty page are flushed (written to datafile), this parameter determines [...]

The performance effects of new patches

We are going to show the effects of the new patches applied to Percona HighPerf release. As you see from the following graphs, there is significant difference to normal version when the data bigger than buffer pool (right graph shows CPU usage)

Wanted: Better memory profiling for MySQL

Quite frequently I would log in to customers system and find MySQL using too much memory. I would look at memory consumed by Innodb (it is often higher than innodb_buffer_pool_size) substract memory used by other global buffers such as query_cache_size and key_buffer and will in many cases see some mysterous memory which I can’t really [...]

Choosing innodb_buffer_pool_size

My last post about Innodb Performance Optimization got a lot of comments choosing proper innodb_buffer_pool_size and indeed I oversimplified things a bit too much, so let me write a bit better description. Innodb Buffer Pool is by far the most important option for Innodb Performance and it must be set correctly. I’ve seen a lot [...]

What to tune in MySQL Server after installation

My favorite question during Interview for people to work as MySQL DBAs or be involved with MySQL Performance in some way is to ask them what should be tuned in MySQL Server straight after installation, assuming it was installed with default settings. I’m surprised how many people fail to provide any reasonable answer to this [...]

MySQL Server Memory Usage

Every so often people ask me the question how should they estimate memory consumption by MySQL Server in given configuration. What is the formula they could use. The reasons to worry about memory usage are quite understandable. If you configure MySQL Server so it uses too small amount of memory it will likey perform suboptimally. [...]