1. SUN AND MYSQL
SOLUTION BUNDLES
Guide to optimizing the Sun Fire™ X4100 M2 or X4200 M2 servers and
the Sun StorageTek™ 2530 Storage Array for MySQL applications
February 2008

2. Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Table of Contents
Optimizing MySQL® with Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Business Drivers – The Balance of Strategy and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Sun MySQL Bundle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Sun Fire™ X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 – More than a Pizza Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Sun SAS HBA for HA and non-HA Storage Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Sun StorageTek 2530 – Faster MySQL Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Steps for Optimizing MySQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Define and Assess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Preparation and Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Optimize for I/O Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Optimize MySQL Memory and CPU Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Optimize File Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Benchmark and Adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Appendix A – Optimization Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
MySQL Sysbench Benchmark Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Hardware Installed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Software Installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Sysbench Benchmarks for X4100 M2, X4200 M2, and StorageTek 2530. . . . . . . . . 15
32 User Read-Only Test Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
32 User Read/Write Test Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
MySQL Settings for Benchmarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3. 1 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Optimizing MySQL® with Sun
The MySQL database has become the world’s most popular open source database
because of its world-class performance, high-reliability, and ease-of-use. It’s used in
more than 11 million installations ranging from large corporations to specialized
embedded applications on every continent in the world. Sun has teamed with AMD
to build optimized 64-bit, high performance server/connectivity/storage solution
bundles to meet the application demands of customers with of Web 2.0, SME and
departmental database requirements. The word “optimized” means different things
to different IT managers. In this paper, we provide framework for assessing, installing,
and configuring MySQL environments to run faster, safer, and more efficiently on Sun’s
AMD based platforms.
Business Drivers – The Balance of Strategy and Operations
More than ever, IT is the engine that drives business operations. IT has become woven
into the very fabric of our businesses. The role of IT often shifts between strategic and
operational depending on the program in question. This year Web 2.0, Green IT,
Virtualization & Consolidation, and providing better IT Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
at lower costs are high on the list of topics.
• Web 2.0 with MySQL – Wiki’s, smashups, and social networking for business are at
the forefront of the Web 2.0 movement. Most of these applications need fast,
efficient, and flexible databases. These tools are growing because they help
businesses collect and leverage the “tribal knowledge” to make the entire organiza-
tion smarter and more effective. They help bridge groups of people to solve real
business challenges for development and customer support.
• Virtualization and consolidation – Nothing has had a more dramatic effect on IT in
the last two years than virtualization. Like a good smashup application that brings
new value to old data, virtualization, power and cooling costs, and multi-core CPUs
have created a “Perfect Storm” of opportunity. These technologies have appeared
at just the right time, addressing the ongoing need to improve IT efficiency,
process more transactions, store more data, and support more customers with
lower overhead.
• Green IT – Green IT is not just about saving the planet, it’s about the real hard dollar
costs of power, cooling, and rack space in datacenters. In many IT shops in major
metropolitan areas, such as London or in the financial district of New York City, extra
power is not available, or has multi-year waiting lists. According to IDC, power and
cooling costs will exceed $40B (USD) by 2010. IT managers need to partner with
vendors who can help them build a Green IT strategy.

4. 2 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
The growth of power costs in IT. Source: IDC, 2006.
• Higher SLAs, for less money – This is a theme that never goes away in any business.
Global competition is relentless. If your company does not optimize, then a new
company will. The secret to higher SLAs for less money is picking solutions that are
optimized, designed for lights out operation and support by a global player, ready to
deploy and ready to make the IT manager’s life easier.
Sun is working with leading technology partners to help IT managers meet these
strategic and tactical needs. Sun and AMD are leaders in virtualization, consolidation,
Green IT and providing higher levels of SLAs. The MySQL bundle is designed to simplify-
deployment and optimization to meet these growing IT needs.
The Sun MySQL Bundle
Sun and AMD are leaders in innovative performance computing. Together they have
teamed to bring the world-class performance of the Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2
servers and Sun StorageTek 2530 storage array in a pair of solution bundles that are
ideal for SMEs and departmental needs. For added value, Sun recommends customers
purchase a Sun Spectrum Service plan and take advantage of features such as
hardware service coverage, telephone and online technical support, SunVIP interop
support, and firmware updates to help reduce storage system management costs and
improve performance.

5. 3 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Bundle details for optimized non-HA and HA MySQL applications:
One Sun Fire X4100 M2 server
• AMD 2220 CPU, 8 GB DDR 400 RAM
• Dual 146 GB SAS and DVD drives
One Sun SAS HBA
One Sun StorageTek 2530 array
• 12 SAS, 73 GB, 15K RPM drives
MySQL Solution Bundle #1
Two Sun Fire X4200 M2 servers
• AMD 2220 CPU, 8 GB DDR 400 RAM
• Dual 146 GB SAS and DVD drives
Four Sun SAS HBAs
One Sun StorageTek 2530 array
• 12 SAS, 146 GB, 15K RPM drives
MySQL Solution Bundle #2

6. 4 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 – More than a Pizza Box
The venerable 1U server is often called the pizza box. Those are not words that
describe the Sun Fire X4100 M2 server, a traditional 1U form factor (Brooklyn Style) and
the Sun X4200 M2, a 2U (Chicago Deep Dish) server. In selecting the solution bundle
components from Sun’s portfolio of products, we chose a best-in-class platform that
helped set a world record for database performance. How do we define best-in-class
for running MySQL?
• More MySQL transactions with HyperTransport memory – For database applications,
the faster the memory, the better it can perform transactions. The HyperTransport
architecture of the X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 servers run MySQL faster with aggre-
gate bandwidth up to 24 GB/s per processor. The AMD Opteron processor with
HyperTransport provides a scalable direct connection between processors, I/O
subsystems, and other chipsets. HyperTransport technology helps reduce the
number of buses in a system, which lowers transaction overhead to improve
MySQL transactions and queries.
• Industry leading CPU performance1 – The AMD multi-core CPUs of the Sun Fire
X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 servers deliver industry leading x86 CPU horse power. This
enables greater consolidation of servers and more VMs of a single system, higher
performance at a lower cost with managers improve SLAs, lower acquisition costs,
and increased consolidation.
• Low power and cooling demands2 – The AMD family of CPUs are more power
efficient CPUs. The Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 servers also use a 2.5 inch
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise class disk drive that offers IOPS performance
increase and 58 percent power savings compared to today’s 3.5 inch drive. This
helps IT managers build a Green IT strategy.
• More connectivity for better virtualization – The Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2
servers are the only systems in this class with 4 native 1 GbE ports and embedded
SAS ports on the base board. The extra connectivity on the Sun Fire X4100 M2 and
X4200 M2 servers increase systems accessibility by clients and make it more capable
of hosting high performance applications, and supporting more VMs for a larger set
of clients. This increased connectivity allows for more bandwidth, without using
expansion slots and use less power.
1
sun.com/servers/entry/X4100M2andX4200M2/
2
sun.com/servers/entry/X4100M2andX4200M2/

7. 5 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• More flexible RAS and HA options – The Sun FireX4100 M2 and X4200 M2 servers
provide the most flexible hot-swap components in its class. This increased
functionality, combined with our stand-alone ILOM, for lights-out operation makes
the Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 servers the leader for HA and RAS in the
x86 market.
Sun Fire X4100 M2
For more detailed product images, visit sun.com/servers/entry/x4100
Sun Fire X4200 M2
For more detailed product images, visit sun.com/servers/entry/x4200
Sun Fire X4100 M2 and Sun Fire X4200 M2 servers
Sun SAS HBA for HA and non-HA Storage Connectivity
The MySQL HA bundle includes four high performance PCIe SAS Host Bus Adapters
(HBAs) and cabling that provide redundant storage connectivity across both servers.
This enables better load balancing and fail over using Suns tools or native OS features.
The non-HA MySQL bundle includes a single high performance PCIe SAS HBA and
cabling for easy connectivity to the Sun StorageTek 2530. Sun’s PCIe SAS HBA
addresses the need for SAS connectivity in the MySQL Bundle. This HBA offers out-
standing performance by matching 8-lanes of PCIe, with 8-lanes of 3 Gb/s SAS. The SAS
interface allows for point-to-point connection enabling higher performance, increased
aggregate bandwidth, higher availability with dual-ported drives, and enhanced
reliability when compared to parallel SCSI. The SAS interface provides universal
interconnect with Serial ATA (SATA), while still offering logical SCSI compatibility along
with the reliability, performance and manageability available in SAS drives. Common
electrical and physical connection allows for the application to dictate the technology
of choice for disk drives. The Sun StorageTek™ PCIe, SAS Host Bus Adapter, 8-port,
supports the following:
• Two x4 external miniSAS connectors (SFF-8088)
• Connects to both SAS and SATA HDDs
• Allows up to 244 end-point devices
• Enterprise-class HBAs ideal for large or mixed OS environments
• Features the award-winning Fusion-MPT HBA architecture from LSI
• Includes an installed low-profile bracket and full height bracket
• Simultaneous on-board support for x64/x86 BootBIOS (Windows and Linux) and
Solaris™ SPARC OpenBoot

8. 6 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun StorageTek 2530 – Faster MySQL Queries
Storage is a key component of optimizing MySQL performance. For this bundle, we
selected the SAS-based StorageTek 2530. SAS is the latest storage technology to be
globally adopted for the enterprise, because it brings the high performance and
reliability at a lower cost. The StorageTek 2530 is what SMEs and departments need to
build mission-critical applications on a frugal budget. The Sun StorageTek 2530 array is
an easy-to-use array that delivers better price/performance and greater rack density
than comparable solutions. The StorageTek 2530 is a leading example of Sun’s storage
expertise to provide best-of-breed technology, reliability, and affordability.
• Easy to configure and manage for MySQL – The Sun StorageTek 2530 is ready to
support MySQL out of the box, making storage management as easy as server
provisioning. The SMI-S-compliant Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager (CAM)
software ensures a friendly user interface from setup to administration. The Web-
based task management interface puts you in control of the array and significantly
reduces the complexity of installation, configuration, and management. Online
capacity expansion, data volume control creation, and host-to-volume mapping are
just a click away, making it easy to make changes quickly and efficiently. CAM is
accessible from anywhere in the world and includes automated diagnostics so you
can focus on precise, predictable, repeatable results. CAM also scales across Sun’s
entire modular disk portfolio.
• More MySQL transactions with 15K SAS Drives – The StorageTek 2530 supports
multiple sizes and speeds of drive. MySQL has multiple performance needs.
The Jet and Streaming databases that underlie the application need storage that is
optimized for random access, while log files require storage that is optimized for
sequential transactions. The StorageTek 2530, bundled with 73 GB or 146 GB SAS
drives, provide high performance write-through capability. Additional write-through
performance can be added by expanding to 36 drives.
• Data protection for MySQL – Managing growth and expansion doesn’t come
easily, especially when you’re operating within a budget. With dual-active RAID
controllers, high availability, and high density, the Sun StorageTek 2530 array
provides a cost-effective solution that lets you take advantage of improved perform-
ance and low-cost growth. The Active-Active configuration supports load balancing
and failover for improved performance and HA.

9. 7 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Dual Active
RAID Controllers
• 12x Hot-Swap SAS drives
• Bundle #1 – 73 GB @ 15K RPM
• Bundle #2 – 146 GB @ 15K RPM Front View
Dual Hot-Swap
Active-Active
RAID Controllers
• Expansion connections
• Management Ports
Rear View
Dual Hot-Swap
Power/Cool Modules
• Dual Power connectors
For more detailed product images, visit sun.com/storagetek/disk_systems/workgroup/2530/
Sun StorageTek 2530
Steps for Optimizing MySQL
Optimizing your MySQL environment takes planning and understanding of the specific
application running on the database—the SLAs required and the type of I/O required
for the specific application. MySQL can be used for a wide variety of applications and
data types; this means that one-size-dose-not-fit-all for optimization parameters and
settings. In this section we outline a way to evaluate the right settings of your
application.
Steps for optimizing MySQL.

10. 8 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Define and Assess
Understanding the data is the first step in optimizing the bundled infrastructure to
support MySQL. The nature of the read/write activity and ratios is vital to establish
which settings will help optimize your solutions. The reason for this is to find the
optimal buffers and caches to reduce excess memory and I/O traffic that are tied to the
data characteristics.
• What data types – Knowing your data type helps you understand what type of
pipeline to create to optimize data transfers, pipeline data movement though the
server, reduce memory usage, optimize read/write operations out of cache to
improve performance and in and out of caches. Each data type requires different
pipelining through the servers and on the array.
Operation Block Size Mode
Write Small Random
Write Large Random
Write Small Sequential
Write Large Sequential
Read Small Random
Read Large Random
Read Small Sequential
Read Large Sequential
• User connections – Knowing this up front enables better understanding of the
overall work load on the server, what MySQL storage engine to load, how to set the
buffers and caches, how to distribute I/O across the SAS links to the storage, and
how to configure the array to support the applications. MySQL is a single-process,
multithreaded application. Besides one master thread with highest priority to con-
trol the server, it creates a dedicated user thread running at normal priority in the
thread pools for each simultaneous client request to process the user request and
send back the result to each client once the result is ready. And there is one single
user thread that waits for input from the console and a group of utility threads
running at lower priority to handle some background tasks.
Currently, MySQL cannot scale well with the number of the user threads handling
client requests. Performance scales up efficiently with each additional user thread
until it reaches the peak performance point. After that, increasing the number of
user connections will decrease MySQL performance because of thread concurrency
contention. For applications where the number of user connections is tunable,
you need to determine—for different workloads—the optimum number of user
connections for peak performance.
• Regulatory requirements – Is this application subject to any specific regulatory
or security/access control requirements? Does the data need to be stored in a
dedicated LUN? What are the business continuance requirements? Does the data
need to replicated synchronously or asynchronously, locally or remotely? It is
important to understand these requirements before the optimization is planned.

11. 9 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• SLA requirements – As with regulatory requirements, SLAs drive the type of storage
and data protection model that needs to be implemented on the array, how the
data is backed up, how often the backup/snapshot is run. SLAs also help set the
business continuance requirements for the application.
Preparation and Installation
The preparation for installing the new Sun Fire X4100 M2 or X4200 M2 servers, and
the StorageTek 2530 starts with four basic items:
• Select server bundles – For My SQL applications that are under 1 TB and do not
require HA configurations we recommend the Sun MySQL Bundle #1 with one
Sun Fire X4100 M2 server and the StorageTek 2530 loaded with 73 GB drives. For
data based that require HA servers and are over 1 TB in size we recommend Sun’s
MySQL Bundle # 2 with two Sun Fire X4200 M2 servers, connected to storage via
4 SAS HBAs and has the data stored on the StorageTek 2530 loaded with 146 GB
drives.
• Physical location – Finding the right rack space, power and cooling to support the
hardware, and required switches and other infrastructure. This should be a simple,
but required step.
• Installing the Sun Fire X4100 M2 or X4200 M2, StorageTek 2530 and OS – Sun pro-
vides a detailed step-by-step installation and configurations guide for each product
at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/5b03d0ed-216d-11db-a023-080020a9ed93.
Next is to load the OS of choice for the applications and set up the basic RAID and
LUN configuration to hold new or migrated data.
• Protect, migrate and validate the data – If this hardware is replacing a current
server, make sure you have a complete backup of the data set to be moved,
preferably to another disk array for rapid access. Next, migrate the data from the
old server storage to the new StorageTek 2530 array and server. Finally, validate that
the data set was moved properly, especially if you have to erase the backup and
original copies.
• Load MySQL – The next step in the optimization process is to load MySQL onto the
new Sun Fire X4100 M2 or X4200 M2 server and test access to the data on the
new array.
Optimize for I/O Types
Now we are ready to begin the optimization process. We have identified that the I/O
types in our assessment phase.
• Baseline I/O loads – Next is to baseline the current workloads and I/O types on the
server. This will help measure optimizations in the final benchmarking phase.
• Group I/O types – As we have discussed, optimizations for random, small read/write
are not the same as larger sequential read/write. If you have multiple I/O types, try
to segment them on multiple servers or VMs.
• Leverage I/O settings – Grouping similar I/O types together will allow the proper
cache, files system settings and MySQL storage engines to be used for optimization.

12. 10 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Optimize MySQL Memory and CPU Options
The next step is to reduce unneeded functions that steal memory and CPU
performance. These include extra buffers that cause extra memory moves of data
and consume CPU resources.
• Reduce CPU and memory uses – One of the key advantages of Open Source
software solutions is the flexibility to optimize for any need. Using the
mysql> show variables will help identify the configuration and system variables.
You can then change values in the my.cnf configuration file, or mysql start up
options to remove or adjust the following MyISAM memory-related variables if
you have only Innodb tables in your system:
– bulk_insert_buffer_size
– key_buffer_size
– key_cache_age_threshold, key_cache_block_size
– key_cache_division_limit
– read_buffer_size, read_rnd_buffer_size
• Optimize tables – Make sure the tables in the database are optimized for the type of
queries and sorts required by the application.
• Identify common queries – MySQL query cache stores the identical SELECT queries
issued by clients to the database server. This makes it possible to locate and re-issue
the same queries without repetitive hard parsing activities. MySQL also stores the
query’s result set in the query cache, which can significantly reduce the overhead of
creating complex result sets for queries from the disk or memory caches, reducing
both physical and logical I/O. This can speed up applications where repetitive
queries of products are being issued. If you see a high value for qcache_hits
compared to your total queries at runtime or a low value for qcache_free_memory
seen from the mysql>show status, you probably need to increase the value of the
query_cache_size parameter accordingly. Otherwise, you would decrease the value
of the query_cache_size parameter to save memory resources for the other MySQL
cache buffers. If qcache_hit is 0 in the runtime, you would completely turn off
the query cache by setting query_cache_type as 0, together with setting
query_cache_size as 0, since there is some overhead caused by having the query
cache enabled besides wasting the memory resource.

13. 11 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
If the application uses many simple SELECT queries without repeating, having query
cache enabled may actually impede performance by 5-10 percent. However, for
the applications having many repeated SELECT queries with large result set, the
performance increase set by the query cache can be 200 percent or more.
– table_cache – Size cache to keep most of tables open since opening tables can be
expensive. The optimum value for table_cache is directly related to the number
of tables that need to be open simultaneously in order to perform multiple-table
joins. The table_cache value should be equal to no less than the number of
concurrent connections times the largest number tables involved in any one join.
1024 is a good value for applications with couple hundreds tables (each connec-
tion has its own entry). You should check the Open_tables status variable to see if
it is large compared to table_cache.
• Select and configure the MySQL I/O engine – MySQL has many variables that can
be adjusted to change the MySQL behavior or for performance purpose. MySQL
includes several storage engines, including MyISAM, InnoDB, HEAP, and Berkeley DB
(BDB), some variables apply to one of the storage engines only, some variables are
used in the SQL layer applying to all the storage engines. There are several memory-
related variables apply for all storage engines. This allow you to optimize the
storage engine in MySQL:
– join_buffer_size – Buffer used for full join. In case there are large joins without
indexes, increase this buffer size to improve the efficiency.
– sort_buffer_size – Buffer used for sort result set allocated by each thread. This can
speed up ORDER BY and GROUP BY queries.
– query_cache_size – Set this variable to a nonzero value to enable query caching
query_cache_limit – The maximum size for cached result set, the larger result set
won’t be cached.
– query_cache_min_res_unit – Query cache allocate memory blocks with the
minimum size set by this variable. When the application has a lot of queries with
small results, default block size (4 KB) may lead to memory fragmentation. So,
with small resultsets, decreasing it to 2048 or 1024 bytes might improve perform-
ance; with large query resultsets, increase it to be 8192, 16384 or more, may
speed up the performance.
– query_cache_type – 0=OFF, 1=ON
• MySQL Innodb only memory-related variables
– innodb_buffer_pool_size – Set the amount of memory allocated to both Innodb
data and index buffer cache. MySQL doesn’t access the disk directly; instead, it
reads data into the internal buffer cache, read/write blocks, and flushes the
changes back to the disk. If the server requests data available in the cache, the
data can be processed right away. Otherwise, the operating system will request
that the data be loaded from the disk. The bigger the cache size, the more disk
accesses can be avoided. For the sysbench I/O bound workload test on the T2000
server with 8 GB RAM, increasing innodb_buffer_pool_size from 4 GB to 5 GB can
improve performance by around 11 percent.

14. 12 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
– innodb_additional_mem_pool_size – Sets the amount of memory allocated to
the buffer storing the InnoDB internal data dictionary and other internal data
structures. This parameter does not affect performance much, so set it as 20M (in
the application with more tables, more memory needs to be allocated here) in the
sysbench OLTP test case.
– innodb_log_buffer_size – Set the amount of memory allocated to the buffer
storing InnoDB write-ahead log entries. For large transactions, before the
log buffer is flushed on each transaction commit, if your setting
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit is at 1, the log can be loaded into the log
buffer instead of flushing to the disk in the background to reduce the disk I/O. If
you see large log I/O in the show innodb status output at runtime, you probably
need to set a larger value for the innodb_log_buffer_size parameter. Since the
sysbench OLTP I/O bound workload doesn’t have long transactions, it is not
necessary to waste memory resources by setting a higher value for the log buffer,
so just set it as 8 MB.
• Other MySQL Innodb variables impacting I/O performance
– innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit – InnoDB flushes the transaction log
to disk approximately once per second in the background. As a default,
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit is set as 1 to flush the log to the disk on each
transaction commit, which is the safest way avoiding transaction loss during
MySQL, OS, or HW crash. For workloads running with many short transactions,
you can reduce disk writing by setting the innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit
parameter with different values. When setting this value at 0, there is no log
flushing on each transaction commit. It can reduce the disk I/O to improve
performance, however, the transaction might be lost if MySQL crashes.
– innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit =0 – In the read-only test, this can improve
performance by 4 percent. When setting this value at 2, the log flushes to the OS
cache (file system cache) instead of the disk on each transaction commit. It can
also reduce the disk I/O and perform a little slower than when the value is set at
0; however, no transaction loss will probably occur with OS or hardware crashes).
– innodb_log_file_size – InnoDB writes to the log files in a circular fashion, so if the
log file has reached the configure limit set by the innodb_log_file_size parameter,
the checkpoint operation is executed at once to flush the modified database
pages. innodb_log_file_size is very important for write-intensive workloads,
especially for large data sets. Larger sizes reduces disk I/O in checkpointing for
better performance but increase recovery times. You will need to increase this
parameter when you see large page writes in the BUFFER POOL AND MEMORY
part of the show innodb status output.

15. 13 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Optimize File Systems
The files system is the next part of the pipeline to optimize. Based on the MySQL
storage engine that was selected, I/O types, this will affect how the files system
should be configured to eliminate double buffering and disk flushing.
• Sync the file systems I/O engine read/write options – File system performance has a
big impact on the overall system performance, particularly when running I/O
bound workloads with a database size much bigger than system memory. How to
configure the file system for better performance is dependent on the workload
access pattern—random or sequential. For sequential workload, we can increase
the file system cluster size to allow reading ahead or writing back more data
from/to the disk to reduce the total number of I/O operations. For random work-
load, we can reduce the file system cluster size to match the innodb I/O size.
• Reduce double buffers and flushes to disk – Review the buffering model of the
MySQL I/O storage engine to remove double buffing. This typically occurs when
both the file’s system and the I/O engine are caching data. This causes extra
memory moves and uses extra CPU cycles. Before MySQL 5.0.42 and 5.1.18, it needs
to mount UFS with forcedirectio option. For the later MySQL 5.0.x and 5.1.x, the
directio can be enabled in my.cnf by setting innodb_flush_method as O_DIRECT.
Benchmark and Adjust
The final step is to put it all together and make any final adjustments. Using the
baseline we establish, run the same tests to measure your improvements. Some
additional tweaking may be required, but this process will help ensure that you get
the most out the Sun MySQL bundle.

16. 14 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Appendix A – An Optimization Benchmark
MySQL Sysbench Benchmark Configuration
Hardware Installed
Host server type Sun Fire X4100 M2 server
CPU: 4 x 2793 MHz
Memory: 7680 MB
Storage model StorageTek 2530
RAID level 5
Disk drives Twelve 73 Gb 15K SAS
Storage connectivity (Fiber Channel, SAS
SAS, SATA, iSCSI)
Number of storage groups/host One
Number of storage controllers Two
HBA model PCI-X SAS Host Bus Adapter
StorageTek 2530 configuration
Use the default storage CAMS profile for configuring the volume with RAID level 5,
we used the default segment size (512 KB) and enable read-ahead mode.
Software Installation
Host OS X4100 M2 server: Solaris OS 10 06/06
MySQL Database Server 5.0.45
Test applications sysbench
MySQL database server installation steps:
• shell> cd /usr/local
• shell> gunzip < /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz | tar xvf -
• shell> ln -s full-path-to-mysql-VERSION-OS mysql
• shell> cd mysql
• shell> scripts/mysql_install_db
• shell> chmod -R 777 *
• shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &
Sysbench test installation steps:
• shell> cd /sysbench-version
• shell> ./configure
• shell> make
• shell> make install
Command to Load 100M-row test database:
• shell> sysbench –test=oltp –oltp-table-size=100000000 –mysql-db=sbtest100m –
max-requests=0 prepare

17. 15 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sysbench Benchmarks for X4100 M2 and StorageTek 2530
MySQL Sysbench OLTP I/O Bound Test on Sun Fire X4100 M2 server with
StorageTek 2530
32 User Read-Only Test Results
Sysbench OLTP I/O bound read-only Test with 32 user connections on X4100 M2. The chart above shows
the MySQL performance improvement after tuning the innodb data and index buffer size, tuning Solaris
UFS with maxcontig settings, and directio.
Sysbench OLTP I/O bound read-only test with 2-256 user connections on X4100 M2.
# of user connections Trans/Sec
2 104.73
4 251.33
8 451.56
16 555.64
32 577.96
64 563.84
128 558.66
256 519.96

18. 16 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
32 User Read/Write Test Results
Sysbench OLTP I/O bound read-write Test with 32 user connections on X4100 M2.
Sysbench OLTP I/O bound read-only Test with 2-256 user connections on X4100 M2.
# of user connections Trans/Sec
2 146.04
4 232.05
8 291.1
16 289.12
32 288.51
64 297.32
128 295.32
256 273.91

19. 17 Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
MySQL Settings for Benchmarks
[mysqld]
port = 3306
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
basedir = /usr/local/mysql
datadir = /usr/local/mysql/data
log-error = /data/error.txt
user=root
skip-locking
max_connections = 3000
table_cache = 1024
max_allowed_packet = 1M
sort_buffer_size = 64K
thread_cache = 8
thread_concurrency = 16
query_cache_size = 0M
query_cache_type = 0
default-storage-engine = innodb
transaction_isolation = REPEATABLE-READ
tmp_table_size = 1M
innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:100M:autoextend
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 5500M
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 20M
innodb_log_file_size =1900M
innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit =1
innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 300
innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct = 90
innodb_thread_concurrency =16

20. Sun and MySQL Solution Bundle Optimization Guide Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA Phone 1-650-960-1300 or 1-800-555-9SUN (9786) Web sun.com
© 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Sun Fire, StorageTek, and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and
other countries. Information subject to change without notice. SunWIN #522027 02/08