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 question, and how many servers are where in wild which are running with default settings.
Even though you can tune quite a lot of variables in MySQL Servers only few of them are really important for most common workload. After you get these settings right other changes will most commonly offer only incremental performance improvements.
key_buffer_size - Very important if you use MyISAM tables. Set up to 30-40% of available memory if you use MyISAM tables exclusively. Right size depends on amount of indexes, data size and workload - remember MyISAM uses OS cache to cache the data so you need to leave memory for it as well, and data can be much larger than indexes in many cases. Check however if all of key_buffer is used over time - it is not rare to see key_buffer being set to 4G while combined size of .MYI files is just 1GB. This would be just a waste. If you use few MyISAM tables you’ll want to keep it lower but still at least 16-32Mb so it is large enough to accommodate indexes for temporary tables which are created on disk.
innodb_buffer_pool_size This is very important variable to tune if you’re using Innodb tables. Innodb tables are much more sensitive to buffer size compared to MyISAM. MyISAM may work kind of OK with default key_buffer_size even with large data set but it will crawl with default innodb_buffer_pool_size. Also Innodb buffer pool caches both data and index pages so you do not need to leave space for OS cache so values up to 70-80% of memory often make sense for Innodb only installations. Same rules as for key_buffer apply - if you have small data set and it is not going to grow dramatically do not oversize innodb_buffer_pool_size you might find better use for memory available.
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size This one does not really affect performance too much, at least on OS with decent memory allocators. Still you might want to have it 20MB (sometimes larger) so you can see how much memory Innodb allocates for misc needs.
innodb_log_file_size Very important for write intensive workloads especially for large data sets. Larger sizes offer better performance but increase recovery times so be careful. I normally use values 64M-512M depending on server size.
innodb_log_buffer_size Default for this one is kind of OK for many workloads with medium write load and shorter transactions. If you have update activity spikes however or work with blobs a lot you might want to increase it. Do not set it too high however as it would be waste of memory - it is flushed every 1 sec anyway so you do not need space for more than 1 sec worth of updates. 8MB-16MB are typically enough. Smaller installations should use smaller values.
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit Crying about Innodb being 100 times slower than MyISAM ? You probably forgot to adjust this value. Default value of 1 will mean each update transaction commit (or each statement outside of transaction) will need to flush log to the disk which is rather expensive, especially if you do not have Battery backed up cache. Many applications, especially those moved from MyISAM tables are OK with value 2 which means do not flush log to the disk but only flush it to OS cache. The log is still flushed to the disk each second so you normally would not loose more than 1-2 sec worth of updates. Value 0 is a bit faster but is a bit less secure as you can lose transactions even in case MySQL Server crashes. Value 2 only cause data loss with full OS crash.
table_cache - Opening tables can be expensive. For example MyISAM tables mark MYI header to mark table as currently in use. You do not want this to happen so frequently and it is typically best to size your cache so it is large enough to keep most of your tables open. It uses some OS resources and some memory but for modern hardware it is typically not the problem. 1024 is good value for applications with couple hundreds tables (remember each connection needs its own entry) if you have many connections or many tables increase it larger. I’ve seen values over 100.000 used.
thread_cache Thread creation/destructions can be expensive, which happen at each connect/disconnect. I normally set this value to at least 16. If application has large jumps in amount of concurrent connections and I see fast growth of
Threads_Created variable I boost it higher. The goal is not to have threads created in normal operation.
query_cache_size If your application is read intensive and you do not have application level caches this can be great help. Do not set it too large as it may slow things down as its maintenance may get expensive. Values from 32M to 512M normally make sense. Check it however after a while and see if it is well used. For certain workloads cache hit ratio is lower than would justify having it enabled.
Note: as you can see all of these are global variables. These variables depend on hardware and mix of storage engines, while per session variables are typically workload specific. If you have simple queries there is no reason to increase sort_buffer_size even if you have 64GB of memory to waste. Furthermore doing so may decrease performance.
I normally leave per session variable tuning to second step after I can analyze workload.
P.S Note MySQL distribution contains bunch of sample my.cnf files which may be great templates to use. Typically they would already be much better than defaults if you chose correct one.
[Jun 07, 2007] Tuning LAMP systems, Part 3: Tuning your MySQL server by Sean A. Walberg
Make your MySQL server fly with these server tuning tips
07 Jun 2007
Applications using the LAMP (Linux®, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) architecture are constantly being developed and deployed. But often the server administrator has little control over the application itself because it's written by someone else. This <a href="<a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/linux/libraryview.jsp?topic_by=All+topics+and+related+products&sort_order=desc&lcl_sort_order=desc&search_by=tuning+lamp&search_flag=true&type_by=Articles&show_abstract=true&sort_by=Relevance&end_no=100&show_all=false">http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/linux/libraryview.jsp?topic_by=All+topics+and+related+products&sort_order=desc&lcl_sort_order=desc&search_by=tuning+lamp&search_flag=true&type_by=Articles&show_abstract=true&sort_by=Relevance&end_no=100&show_all=false</a>">series of three articles</a> discusses many of the server configuration items that can make or break an application's performance. This third article, the last in the series, focuses on tuning the database layer for maximum efficiency.
You can do three things to make your MySQL server faster, from least effective to most effective:
- Throw hardware at the problem.
- Tune the settings of the MySQL process.
- Optimize your queries.
|
Throwing hardware at a problem is often the first thought, especially because databases are resource hogs. This solution can only take you so far, though. In practical terms, you can usually double your central processing unit (CPU) or disk speed, and maybe increase your memory by a factor of 4 or 8.
The second best thing to do is to tune the MySQL server, also called mysqld
. Tuning the process means allocating memory to the right places and givingmysqld
an idea of what type of load to expect. Rather than make the disks faster, it's better to reduce the number of disk accesses needed. Similarly, making sure the MySQL process is operating correctly means it can spend more time servicing queries than taking care of background tasks like temporary disk tables and opening and closing files. Tuningmysqld
is the focus of this article.
The best thing you can do is make sure your queries are optimized. This means the proper indexes are applied to tables, and queries are written in such a way that they take advantage of MySQL's strengths. Even though this article doesn't cover query tuning (books have been written on the subject), it configures mysqld
to report queries that may need tuning.
Just because these tasks have been assigned an order doesn't mean you can ignore the hardware and mysqld
settings in favor of properly tuned queries. A slow machine is a slow machine, and I've seen fast machines with well-written queries fail under load because mysqld
was consumed with busy-work instead of servicing queries.
In a SQL server, the data tables sit on disk. Indexes provide a means for the server to find a particular row of data in the table without having to search the entire table. When the entire table has to be searched, it's called a table scan. Most often, you want only a small subset of the data in the table, so a full table scan wastes a lot of disk I/O and therefore time.This problem is compounded when data must be joined, because many more rows must be compared between the two sides of the join.
Of course, table scans aren't always a sign of a problem; sometimes it's more efficient to read the whole table than it is to pick through it (making these decisions is the job of the query planner in the server process). Inefficient use of indexes, or not being able to use indexes at all, slows the queries, and this issue becomes more pronounced as the load on the server and the size of the tables increases. Queries that take more than a given amount of time to execute are called slow queries.
You can configure mysqld
to log slow queries in the aptly named slow query log. Administrators then look at this log to help them determine which parts of the application need further investigation. Listing 1 shows the configuration required in my.cnf to enable the slow query log.
Listing 1. Enable the MySQL slow query log
[mysqld]
; enable the slow query log, default 10 seconds
log-slow-queries
; log queries taking longer than 5 seconds
long_query_time = 5
; log queries that don't use indexes even if they take less than long_query_time
; MySQL 4.1 and newer only
log-queries-not-using-indexes
|
These three settings, used together, log any queries that take longer than 5 seconds and any queries that don't use indexes. Note the caveat about
log-queries-not-using-indexes
: You must have MySQL 4.1 or newer. The slow query log is in your MySQL data directory and is called hostname-slow.log. If you'd rather use a different name or path, you can do so with log-slow-queries = /new/path/to/file
in my.cnf.Reading through the slow query log is best done with the mysqldumpslow
command. Specify the path to the logfile, and you're given a sorted list of the slow queries, along with how many times they're found in the log. One helpful feature is thatmysqldumpslow
removes any user-specified data before collating the results, so different invocations of the same query are counted as one; this helps point out queries in need of the most work.
Many LAMP applications rely heavily on the database but make the same queries over and over. Each time the query is made, the database must do the same work -- parse the query, determine how to execute it, load information from disk, and return it to the client. MySQL has a feature called the query cache that stores the result of a query in memory, should it be needed again. In many instances, this increases performance drastically. The catch, though, is that the query cache is disabled by default.
Adding query_cache_size = 32M
to /etc/my.conf enables a 32MB query cache.
After you enable the query cache, it's important to understand whether it's being used effectively. MySQL has several variables you can watch to see how things are going in the cache. Listing 2 shows the status of the cache.
Listing 2. Display the query cache statistics
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'qcache%';
+-------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------------+------------+
| Qcache_free_blocks | 5216 |
| Qcache_free_memory | 14640664 |
| Qcache_hits | 2581646882 |
| Qcache_inserts | 360210964 |
| Qcache_lowmem_prunes | 281680433 |
| Qcache_not_cached | 79740667 |
| Qcache_queries_in_cache | 16927 |
| Qcache_total_blocks | 47042 |
+-------------------------+------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
The breakdown of these items is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. MySQL query cache variables
Variable name | Description |
---|---|
Qcache_free_blocks | The number of contiguous memory blocks in the cache. Higher numbers are a sign of fragmentation. FLUSH QUERY CACHE defragments the cache so there's one free block. |
Qcache_free_memory | The free memory in the cache. |
Qcache_hits | Incremented each time a query is served from the cache. |
Qcache_inserts | Incremented each time a query is inserted. Divide the number of inserts by the hits to get your miss rate; subtract this value from 1 to get your hit rate. In the previous example, approximately 87% of the queries are getting served from cache. |
Qcache_lowmem_prunes | How many times the cache ran out of memory and had to be cleaned up to make room for more queries. This number is best looked at over time; if it's increasing, it's a sign that either fragmentation is serious or memory is low (free_blocks and free_memory , above, tell you which it is). |
Qcache_not_cached | The number of queries that weren't candidates for caching, usually because they weren't SELECT statements. |
Qcache_queries_in_cache | The number of queries (and responses) current cached. |
Qcache_total_blocks | The number of blocks in the cache. |
Often, showing the variables several seconds apart indicates change, which helps determine whether the cache is being used effectively. Running FLUSH STATUS
resets some of the counters, which is helpful if the server has been running for a while.
It's tempting to make an excessively large query cache in the hopes of caching everything. Because mysqld
must perform maintenance on the cache, such as pruning when memory becomes low, the server can get bogged down trying to manage the cache. As a rule, if FLUSH QUERY CACHE
takes a long time, the cache is too large.
Enforce limits
You should enforce a few limits in mysqld
to ensure that the system load doesn't cause resource starvations. Listing 3 shows some important resource-related settings from my.cnf.
Listing 3. MySQL resource settings
set-variable=max_connections=500
set-variable=wait_timeout=10
max_connect_errors = 100 |
The maximum connections are governed in the first line. Like
MaxClients
from Apache, the idea is to make sure only the number of connections you can serve are allowed. To determine the maximum number of connections your server has seen so far, executeSHOW STATUS LIKE 'max_used_connections'
.The second line tells mysqld
to terminate any connections that have been idle for more than 10 seconds. In LAMP applications, the connection to the database is usually only as long as the Web server takes to process the request. Sometimes, under load, connections hang around and take up connection table space. If you have many interactive users or use persistent connections to the database, then setting this low isn't a good idea!
The final line is a safety measure. If a host has problems connecting to the server and ends up aborting the request too many times, the host is locked until FLUSH HOSTS
can be run. By default, 10 failures are enough to cause blocking. Changing this value to 100 gives the server enough time to recover from whatever problems it has. Using a higher value doesn't help you much because if the server can't connect once in 100 tries, chances are it's not going to connect at all.
MySQL supports well over 100 tunable settings; but luckily, mastering a small handful will take care of most needs. Finding the right value for these settings involves looking at status variables via the SHOW STATUS
command and, from that, determining whethermysqld
is behaving as you wish. You can't allocate more memory to buffers and caches than exists in the system, so tuning often involves making compromises.
MySQL tunables apply to either the whole mysqld
process or each individual client session.
Each table is represented as a file on disk and must be opened before it can be read. To speed up the process of reading from the file, mysqld
caches these open files up to the limit specified by table_cache
in /etc/mysqld.conf. Listing 4 shows how to display the activity associated with opening tables.
Listing 4. Display table-open activity
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'open%tables';
+---------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------+-------+
| Open_tables | 5000 |
| Opened_tables | 195 |
+---------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
Listing 4 shows that 5,000 tables are currently open and that 195 tables had to be opened because there was no available file descriptor in the cache (the statistics were cleared earlier, so it's feasible to have 5,000 open tables with a history of only 195 opens). If Opened_tables
increases quickly as you rerun the SHOW STATUS
command, you aren't getting enough hits out of your cache. If Open_tables
is much lower than your table_cache
setting, you have too many (some room to grow is never a bad thing, though). Adjust your table cache with table_cache = 5000
, for example.
Like the table cache, there is also a cache for threads. mysqld
spawns threads as needed when receiving connections. On a busy server where connections are torn up and down quickly, caching threads for use later speeds up the initial connection.
Listing 5 shows how to determine if you have enough threads cached.
Listing 5. Show thread-usage statistics
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'threads%';
+-------------------+--------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------+--------+
| Threads_cached | 27 |
| Threads_connected | 15 |
| Threads_created | 838610 |
| Threads_running | 3 |
+-------------------+--------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
The important value here is
Threads_created
, which is incremented each time mysqld
has to create a new thread. If this number increases quickly between successive SHOW STATUS
commands, you should look at increasing your thread cache. You do this with thread_cache = 40
, for example, in my.cnf.The key buffer stores index blocks for MyISAM tables. Ideally, requests for these blocks should come from memory instead of disk. Listing 6 shows how to determine how many blocks were read from disk versus those from memory.
Listing 6. Determine key efficiency
mysql> show status like '%key_read%';
+-------------------+-----------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------+-----------+
| Key_read_requests | 163554268 |
| Key_reads | 98247 |
+-------------------+-----------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
Key_reads
represents the number of requests that hit disk, and Key_read_requests
is the total number. Dividing the reads by the read requests gives the miss rate -- in this case, 0.6 misses per 1,000 requests. If you're missing more than 1 per 1,000 requests, you should consider increasing your key buffer. key_buffer = 384M
, for example, sets the buffer to 384MB.
Temporary tables are used in more advanced queries where data must be stored temporarily before further processing happens, such as in GROUP BY
clauses. Ideally, such tables are created in memory; but if a temporary table gets too large, it's written to disk. Listing 7 shows the statistics associated with temporary-table creation.
Listing 7. Determine temporary-table usage
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'created_tmp%';
+-------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------------+-------+
| Created_tmp_disk_tables | 30660 |
| Created_tmp_files | 2 |
| Created_tmp_tables | 32912 |
+-------------------------+-------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
Each use of a temporary table increases
Created_tmp_tables
; disk-based tables also increment Created_tmp_disk_tables
. There is no hard-and-fast rule for the ratio because it depends on the queries involved. Watching Created_tmp_disk_tables
over time shows the rate of created disk tables, and you can determine the effectiveness of the settings. Both tmp_table_size
andmax_heap_table_size
control the maximum size of temporary tables, so make sure you set them both in my.cnf.
The following settings are per session. Take care when you set these numbers, because when multiplied by the number of potential connections, these options represent a lot of memory! You can change these numbers in the session through code or for all sessions in my.cnf.
When MySQL must perform a sort, it allocates a sort buffer to store the rows as they're read from disk. If the size of the data to sort is too large, the data must go to temporary files on disk and be sorted again. If the sort_merge_passes
status variable is high, this is an indication of this disk activity. Listing 8 shows some of the sort-related status counters.
Listing 8. Show-sort statistics
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE "sort%";
+-------------------+---------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------+---------+
| Sort_merge_passes | 1 |
| Sort_range | 79192 |
| Sort_rows | 2066532 |
| Sort_scan | 44006 |
+-------------------+---------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec) |
If sort_merge_passes
is high, this is an indication that sort_buffer_size
needs attention. For example, sort_buffer_size = 4M
sets the sort buffer to 4MB.
MySQL also allocates memory to read tables. Ideally, the indexes provide enough information to read in only the needed rows, but sometimes queries (through poor design or the nature of the data) require large chunks of the table to be read. To understand this behavior, you need to know how many SELECT
statements were run and the number of times you had to read the next row in the table (rather than a direct access through an index). The commands to do so are shown in Listing 9.
Listing 9. Determine table-scan ratio
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE "com_select";
+---------------+--------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------+--------+
| Com_select | 318243 |
+---------------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE "handler_read_rnd_next";
+-----------------------+-----------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-----------------------+-----------+
| Handler_read_rnd_next | 165959471 |
+-----------------------+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec) |
The Handler_read_rnd_next
/ Com_select
gives your table-scan ratio -- in this case, 521:1. Anything over 4000, and you should look at your read_buffer_size
, such as read_buffer_size = 4M
. If you're growing this number beyond 8M, it's time to talk to your developers about tuning those queries!
Even though the SHOW STATUS
commands are helpful when you're drilling down into specific settings, you need some tools to help you interpret the vast amounts of data provided by mysqld
. I've found three tools to be indispensable; you can find links in theResources section.
Most sysadmins are familiar with the top
command, which provides a constantly updated view of the CPU and memory consumed by tasks. mytop
is modelled after top
; it provides a view of all the connected clients along with any queries they're currently running.mytop
also provides real-time and historical data about key-buffer and query-cache efficiency, and statistics about the queries being run. It's a useful tool to see what's going on -- within 10 seconds, you can get a view of the server's health and display any connections that are causing problems.
mysqlard
is a daemon that connects to the MySQL server and collects data every 5 minutes, storing it in a Round Robin Database backend. A Web page displays the data, such as table-cache usage, key efficiency, connected clients, and temporary-table usage. Whereas mytop
provides a snapshot of server health, mysqlard
provides long-term health information. As a bonus, mysqlard
uses some of the information it collects to make suggestions about how to tune your server.
Another tool for collecting SHOW STATUS
information is mysqlreport
. It's far more verbose in its reporting than mysqlard
because it analyzes every facet of the server. It's an excellent tool for tuning a server because it performs the appropriate calculations on the status variables to help you determine what needs fixing.
- "Migrate from MySQL or PostgreSQL to DB2 Express-C" (developerWorks, June 2006) offers an easy way to migrate from MySQL to DB2 Express-C.
- IBM also provides help for MySQL administrators who are moving to DB2 Express-C by means of "Leveraging MySQL skills to learn DB2 Express" (developerWorks, Feb 2006) and other articles in the series.
- "Using MySQL in a federated database environment" (developerWorks, Dec 2004) is a tutorial on accessing data stored in a MySQL database from WebSphere. IBM makes sure that WebSphere® software works well with MySQL.
- SHOW VARIABLES and SHOW STATUS are defined well in the MySQL documentation.
- If you like blogs, MySQL Performance Blog, Xaprb, and MySQL DBA are worth reading.
- In the Architecture area on developerWorks, get the resources you need to advance your skills in the architecture arena. Developing the proper architecture is the key to scaling LAMP applications.
- In the developerWorks Linux zone, find more resources for Linux developers, including Linux tutorials, as well as our readers' favorite Linux articles and tutorials over the last month.
- Stay current with developerWorks technical events and Webcasts.
Get products and technologies
- Despite being three years old by now, High Performance MySQL is still a valuable book. The author also has a Web site with various articles about MySQL.
- mytop tells you exactly what's going on with your MySQL server at that instant and provides some key statistics. This is the first program I turn to when I hear of database problems.
- mysqlard graphs key performance indicators in MySQL servers and provides tuning advice.
- mysqlreport is a must-have tool. It analyzes
SHOW STATUS
variables on your behalf. - A MySQL article isn't complete without a link to phpMyAdmin. Even though some interpretation of the status variables is provided, this product's strength is how easy it makes administration.
- Order the SEK for Linux, a two-DVD set containing the latest IBM trial software for Linux from DB2®, Lotus®, Rational®, Tivoli®, and WebSphere®.
- With IBM trial software, available for download directly from developerWorks, build your next development project on Linux
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