Given my area of expertise, I wanted to share a few some simple tips with you to help you tweak variables and improve the performance of your MySQL server. Given that every application is different, this isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution, but it’ll at least give you a starting point for troubleshooting.

First: Get mysqltuner.pl. This is a fine script by Major Hayden that will give you some valuable information regarding the performance of your MySQL server.

Second: Look for fragmented tables. What are fragmented tables? If there are random insertions into or deletions from the indexes of a table, the indexes may become fragmented. Fragmentation means that the physical ordering of the index pages on the disk is not close to the index ordering of the records on the pages or that there are many unused pages in the 64-page blocks that were allocated to the index. The symptoms of fragmented tables can be that table can take more disk space than needed or the results may return slower with more disk I/O than needed. INNODB users need to check the fragmentation often because when INNODB marks data as deleted, it never overwrites the blocks with new data … It just marks them as unusable. As a result, the data size is artificially inflated and data retrieval is slowed.

Fortunately, there is a way to see your table fragmentation and that is to run a query against the information_schemea to show all tables that are fragmented and the percentage of fragmentation:

SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, CONCAT(ROUND(data_length / ( 1024 * 1024 ), 2), 'MB') DATA, CONCAT(ROUND(data_free  / ( 1024 * 1024 ), 2), 'MB')FREE from information_schema.TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA NOT IN ('information_schema','mysql') and Data_free < 0;

Fixing the fragmentation is easy, but there are a few caveats. When defragmenting a table, it will lock the table, so make sure you can afford the lock. To fix fragmented tables, you can simply run optimize table <table name>; to rebuild the table and all indexes or you can change the engine of the table with alter table <table name> engine = INNODB;

I have written a simple bash script in bash to go through, defragment and optimize your tables:

#!/bin/bash
 
MYSQL_LOGIN='-u<user name> --password=<passowrd>'
 
for db in $(echo "SHOW DATABASES;" | mysql $MYSQL_LOGIN | grep -v -e "Database" -e "information_schema")
do
        TABLES=$(echo "USE $db; SHOW TABLES;" | mysql $MYSQL_LOGIN |  grep -v Tables_in_)
        echo "Switching to database $db"
        for table in $TABLES
        do
                echo -n " * Optimizing table $table ... "
                echo "USE $db; OPTIMIZE TABLE $table" | mysql $MYSQL_LOGIN >/dev/null
                echo "done."
        done
done

You’d be surprised how much of an impact table fragmentation has on MySQL performance, and this is an easy way to quickly troubleshoot your database that “isn’t as fast as it used to be.” If you follow the above steps and still can’t make sense of what’s causing your database to lag, our Managed Hosting team is always here to work with you to get your servers back in shape … And with the flexibility of month-to-month contract terms and the ability to add managed capabilities to specific pieces of your infrastructure, we have to earn your business every month with spectacular service.

-Lee

You should be seeing a blog from Nathan in the next half hour or so with more detail about how we approached managed hosting, so you’ll have all the background you need to springboard into that post after you watch this video.

If you’ve heard everything you need to hear about managed hosting and want to start the process of adding it to servers on your account, visit http://www.softlayer.com/solutions/managed-hosting/ or chat with a sales rep, and they can help you get squared away. If you’re not sure whether it’s a good fit, ask for a sales engineer to consult … They’re a great group with a pretty awesome manager.

Paul, sorry for stealing your spot in the 3 Bars | 3 Questions rotation! I’m handing the baton back over to you to talk about TechWildcatters and the Technology Partners Marketplace in the next episode.

-Tam