Mohammed Noufal 
Avoid a slow MySQL database and avoid a slow website! Delight your visitors with the performance! Reduce your server costs with MySQL database efficiency!
Nexcess & My SQL: Tuning Your MySQL Database for Performance
About MySQL Database Tuning
MySQL is the most popular open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that generates meaningful structure and accessibility for large amounts of data. However, with a large amount of data and poorly designed SQL queries, we will face MySQL database performance issues. Also, slow database performance can seriously affect all your applications and users.
MySQL database performance tuning tools will help us to identify possible tuning tips to improve the database performance quickly. By following those tuning tips, MySQL database can respond to queries faster, leading to improved site performance.
The Advantages of MySQL Database Performance Tuning
The significant benefit of identifying the performance enhancement factor for a MySQL database is that it helps you to avoid over-provisioning and reduce cost by choosing the right size of your servers. It also provides you the awareness of whether moving data storage or adding server capacity will help to improve in performance or not and estimate the cost for the same. Once we have tuned the MySQL database correctly, it will deliver optimized performance results and functionality. This will lower unwanted task load and optimize the MySQL database for faster data retrieval.
How to Improve MySQL Database Performance
There are two types of MySQL database tunings available. System MySQL Performance Tuning and Software MySQL Performance Tuning. Adjusting hardware and software options at the system level is called System MySQL Performance Tuning. By tweaking the MySQL database configuration files, structuring the MySQL database to retrieve data more efficiently, and writing more efficient MySQL database queries will help us to maximize query speeds on a MySQL database at the software level with Software MySQL Performance Tuning.
System MySQL Performance Tuning Part 1: Monitor the Primary Hardware Resources
To make your MySQL database function properly, you will need the four main hardware resources: storage, memory, processor, and network. If any of these hardware resources don’t function correctly, it will affect the MySQL database server, leading to poor MySQL database performance. If you focus on choosing the proper hardware and troubleshoot problems with the hardware, you will be able to understand their ideal setup and configuration.
Storage
If the server uses HDD (hard disk drives) for storage, you can upgrade to SSD (solid-state drives) to improve server performance. To monitor your disk input/output rates, you can use a monitor tool like iotop or sar from the sysstat package. First, let’s keep an eye on how much disk space MySQL is using compared to other resources. If the disk usage is much higher than other resources, you can consider adding more storage or upgrading the disk to faster storage.
Memory
The memory represents the total RAM in the MySQL database storage server. Adjusting or improving the memory will enhance the MySQL server’s total RAM, which helps to improve performance. You can find the buffer pool size command for optimizing memory in the server configuration section. You can also adjust the memory cache to improve performance. If the server is continuously running out of memory, you can upgrade by adding more. If the server runs short of memory, the server will cache data storage (like a hard drive) to act as memory. Please note that database caching slows down the server performance.
Processor
The processor’s speed shows how fast the server is. The top command will provide detailed information on the CPU and memory usage per process or how the resources are used. When using MySQL, we will need to monitor that particular process as a usage percentage. If it is too high and the CPU is a bottleneck, and it needs to be upgraded.
Network
It is essential to monitor network traffic to make sure the server has sufficient infrastructure to manage the load. If the network is overloading, it will cause latency, dropped packets, and even server outages. So, it is vital to make sure the server has enough network bandwidth to accommodate the normal levels of database traffic.
Software MySQL Performance Tuning Part 2: Prefer InnoDB Over MyISAM
The InnoDB supports more advanced features and has in-built optimization mechanics. MyISAM uses an older database design, so its database design efficiency is less ideal. InnoDB uses clustered index, and it will keep data in pages, which are stored in consecutive physical blocks. If its value is very large for a page, InnoDB migrates it to another location, then indexes it. This feature helps to keep important data in the same location on the storage device, and therefore it takes the hard drive minimum time to access the data.
Software MySQL Performance Tuning Part 3: Upgrade the MySQL Database to the Latest Version
Upgrading MySQL to the latest version is not always possible for older and legacy databases. But you will need to check the version of MySQL in use and upgrade to the latest if possible. Newer versions have improvements in performance by default. So, it helps to save time to find the solutions to typical performance tuning for common MySQL issues. In general, it’s always recommended to use default or native MySQL performance enhancement over scripting and configuration files.