Tag: Performance

What Does Server Load Mean?

Checking a server’s load allows us to evaluate server resources and confirm they are sufficient for any running application. It enables us to troubleshoot slow performance and reliably pinpoint any server resource that may need attention.

As discussed earlier in our MySQL Performance series, the InnoDB storage engine is designed to be a high-performance database for very large datasets. The row-locking technique it uses allows for many read and write requests to occur on a single table concurrently. This is a vast improvement in speed over traditional table-locking of the MyISAM engine. This part of our MySQL Performance series will focus on configuring InnoDB tables for maximum concurrency with minimal disk input/output (I/O).

The majority of work needed when adjusting the MySQL server is editing the applicable directives within a MySQL configuration file. There are multiple, optional configuration files that MySQL looks for when starting up. They are read in the following order:

How directives behave and which directives are mainly available hinges on the loaded MPM. As discussed in our previous series, MPM is short for MultiProcess Modules, and they determine the basis for how Apache addresses multiprocessing. Using our last article on Apache MPM Modules as a springboard, we will use this section to cover the following subsections:

Memcached works to enhance performance by keeping a copy of commonly used script elements within the server’s memory in a form that is more easily read by the server thus reducing time. A bonus feature of this object cache is its ability to decrease the number of connections to your database. In this tutorial, we instruct how to install Memcached, but it's important to note that when using Memcache in an application, the application must be specially coded or configured to store and retrieve data this cached data.

A major factor in database performance is the storage engine used by the database, and more specifically, its tables. Different storage engines provide better performance in one situation over another. For general use, there are two contenders to be considered. These are MyISAM, which is the default MySQL storage engine, or InnoDB, which is an alternative engine built-in to MySQL intended for high-performance databases. Before we can understand the difference between the two storage engines, we need to understand the term “locking.”

Memcached is a distributed, high-performance, in-memory caching system that is primarily used to speed up sites that make heavy use of databases. It can, however, be used to store objects of any kind. Nearly every popular CMS has a plugin or module to take advantage of Memcached, and many programming languages have a Memcached library, including PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python. Memcached runs in memory and is thus quite speedy since it does not need to write data to disk.

Memcached is a distributed, high-performance, in-memory caching system that is primarily used to speed up sites that make heavy use of databases. It can however be used to store objects of any kind. Nearly every popular CMS has a plugin or module to take advantage of memcached, and many programming languages have a memcached library, including PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python. Memcached runs in memory and is thus quite speedy, since it does not need to write data to disk.

Memcached is a distributed, high-performance, in-memory caching system that is primarily used to speed up sites that make heavy use of databases. It can, however, be used to store objects of any kind. Nearly every popular CMS has a plugin or module to take advantage of Memcached, and many programming languages have a Memcached library, including PHP, Perl, Ruby, and Python. Memcached runs in memory and is thus quite speedy since it does not need to write data to disk.