MySQL Optimization Notes

[Joshua Dickerson]

Start off by reading -- http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql-optimization.html and more specifically -- http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/optimizing-the-server.html

• skip_networking should be ON unless you are expecting connections from outside sources. Remember, Apache/PHP is the connection. If Apache is on the same machine as MySQL, you don't need to have networking so skip it. Most people will want this to be ON. See this for more info.
• The easier the user priveleges are, the faster everything will be. For instance, if you grant a user to have privs on only certain tables in your database, it needs to check the privileges everytime the table is opened. If you used a database-wide grant, it would only have to check privs when the database is opened (when SMF opens a connection to the MySQL server)
• Persistent connections aren't beneficially to 99% of users. Use your thread_cache. Make it greater than 0. Read more