While working with live servers, its very important to ensure that the services which are running on them are tweaked and tuned for optimized performance. Same thing applies to MySQL, which is the back bone of many websites. One of the tools which I have been using for quite a some time to understand and optimize MySQL servers which I have been managing is MySQLTuner. This helps me quite a lot in database optimization by cross checking the mysql resource usage, server hardware information etc.
MySQLTuner is a high-performance MySQL tuning script written in perl that will provide you with a snapshot of a MySQL server’s health. Based on the statistics gathered, specific recommendations will be provided that will increase a MySQL server’s efficiency and performance. The script gives you automated MySQL tuning that is on the level of what you would receive from a MySQL DBA.
Installation and Requirements:
The script is a basic Perl script that has no additional requirements. At this time, MySQLTuner is compatible with Linux/Unix based operating systems with Perl 5.6 or later. MySQL versions 3.23 and later are supported by the script.
To get started, simply download MySQLTuner and make it executable:
# wget https://mysqltuner.com/mysqltuner.pl
# chmod +x mysqltuner.pl
# ./mysqltuner.pl
License:
MySQLTuner is offered completely free, and is distributed under the GPL.
Features:
- NEW! Remote server checks: Connects to remote servers to perform tests.
- NEW! Convenient MySQL logins: MySQLTuner will automatically log in to MySQL on servers running Plesk, servers with ~/.my.cnf files, and server without MySQL root passwords. If you need to authenticate manually, you can pass the username and password on the command line or provide the credentials interactively.
- NEW! Manually set memory sizes: Users on virtual environments can now specify how much RAM and swap memory are present so that the script’s calculations will be accurate.
- Memory Usage: Calculates MySQL memory usage at max load and makes recommendations for increasing or decreasing the MySQL memory footprint. Per-thread and server-wide buffer data is calculated separately for an accurate snapshot of the server’s configuration.
- Slow Queries: Reviews the amount of slow queries relative to the total queries. Slow query time limits are also analyzed and recommendations are made.
- Connections: Current and historical connection counts are reviewed.
- Key Buffer: Takes configuration data and compares it to the actual indexes found in MyISAM tables. Key cache hit rates are calculated and variable adjustments are suggested.
- Query Cache: Query cache hit rates and usage percentages are used to make recommendations for the query cache configuration variables.
- Sorting & Joins: Per-thread buffers that affect sorts and joins are reviewed along with the statistics from the queries run against the server.
- Temporary Tables: Variable recommendations are made to reduce temporary tables that are written to the disk.
- Table Cache: Compares total tables opened to the currently open tables. Calculates the table cache hit rate in order to make suggestions.
- Open Files: Determines if the server will approach or run into the open file limit set by the operating system or the MySQL server itself.
- Table Locks: Finds table locking that forces queries to wait and makes suggestions for reducing locks that require a wait.
- Thread Cache: Calculates how many times MySQL must create a new thread to respond to a query.
- Aborted Connections: Finds applications that are not closing connections to MySQL properly.
- Read/Write Ratios: Calculates the percentage of read and write operations on your MySQL installation.
Try it out today! If you think you have done this all I have one more last bit of information.
Optimizing the database regularly will also help you run the server fast! Put the following line in cron.
mysqlcheck -o --all-databases
