server

In this article we will be going over a higher level view of MySQL optimization - InnoDB versus MyISAM, whether or not you should use the Query Cache, and the new InnoDB Barracuda file format. We discuss what to use and when, which is important for tuning your own my.cnf configuration.

This article is for database server administrators or those who plan on being one soon, who want to have an efficient setup for serving database requests. This article primarily focuses on disk arrangement, partitioning, mounting, and making HugePages available to MySQL - in essence, setting up the server to run MySQL efficiently.

my.cnf configuration will be discussed in the next two articles, which will be more valuable to a wider class of users. VPS users should mostly focus on the tmpfs portion of this article, below, as they can safely make use of that. Some VPSes can also use HugePages, so if you can take advantage of them, do so.