May 26, 2013

Find unused indexes

I wrote one week ago about how to find duplicate indexes. This time we’ll learn how to find unused indexes to continue improving our schema and the overall performance. There are different possibilites and we’ll explore the two most common here. User Statistics from Percona Server and pt-index-usage. User Statistics User Statistics is an improvement [...]

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 [...]

Join Optimizations in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5

This is the third blog post in the series of blog posts leading up to the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. This blog post is targeted at the join related optimizations introduced in the optimizer. These optimizations are available in both MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5, and MariaDB 5.5 [...]

Multi Range Read (MRR) in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5

This is the second blog post in the series of blog posts leading up to the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. This blog post is aimed at the optimizer enhancement Multi Range Read (MRR). Its available in both MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5 Now let’s take a look at [...]

Index Condition Pushdown in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5 and its performance impact

I have been working with Peter in preparation for the talk comparing the optimizer enhancements in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 5.5. We are taking a look at and benchmarking optimizer enhancements one by one. So in the same way this blog post is aimed at a new optimizer enhancement Index Condition Pushdown (ICP). Its available [...]

Introducing new type of benchmark

Traditionally the most benchmarks are focusing on throughput. We all get used to that, and in fact in our benchmarks, sysbench and tpcc-mysql, the final result is also represents the throughput (transactions per second in sysbench; NewOrder transactions Per Minute in tpcc-mysql). However, like Mark Callaghan mentioned in comments, response time is way more important [...]

Announcing Percona Toolkit Release 2.0.3

We’ve released Percona Toolkit 2.0.3, with a couple of major improvements and many minor ones. You can download it, read the documentation, and get support for it. What’s new? You can read the changelog for the details, but here are the highlights: Brand new pt-diskstats, thanks to Brian Fraser. This tool is completely rewritten, and [...]

Virident FlashMAX MLC in tpcc-mysql workload

As I mentioned in previous post on Virident FlashMAX MLC, beside sysbench benchmark, I also run tpcc-mysql (to compare performance Virident FlashMAX vs Fusion-io ioDrive Duo) The report with results is there: http://www.percona.com/files/white-papers/virident-mlc-tpcc.pdf

MLC SSD card lifetime and write amplification

As MLC-based SSD cards are raising popularity, there is also a raising concern how long it can survive. As we know, a MLC NAND module can handle 5,000-10,000 erasing cycles, after which it gets unusable. And obviously the SSD card based on MLC NAND has a limited lifetime. There is a lot of misconceptions and [...]

Review of Virident FlashMAX MLC cards

I have been following Virident for a long time (e.g. http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2010/06/15/virident-tachion-new-player-on-flash-pci-e-cards-market/). They have great PCIe Flash cards based on SLC NAND. I always thought that Virident needed to come up with an MLC card, and I am happy to see they have finally done so. At Virident’s request, I performed an evaluation of their MLC [...]