So, I'll be honest, this is a weak area for me.
Whenever I've been tasked with mysql performance tuning, I end up reading the mysql documentation a lot. And I usually end up setting values that will maximize RAM usage (hopefully, as much as I can get away with) and minimize disk IO. (hopefully) That's about all I know. And I usually don't retain a lot of information from these exercises, probably because I don't play 'web developer' in my spare time enough to understand the nitty-gritty.
To be honest, usually I avoid mysql tuning issues, and leave them to others who are more experienced with it, but I'd like to change that.
Part of me thinks that no sysadmin really understands how to tune mysql for a specific environment, unless they are also a developer, but I want to be wrong about that.
Can someone school me? How can I learn more about mysql tuning from a sysadmin perspective, and in general?
BONUS: I understand that some queries can be optimized by adding an index to a table. I would really like to know how to identify this situation, and how to know what index should be created to increase performance, and also why this helps.
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