Hi All,

First of all, thanks for even reading this. Any help, advise, wisdom, assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Here's the problem:

I am a systems admin who's having serious MySQL load problems. Our application is a database that provides solutions to mostly hospitals. At one of our largest customer hospitals, we've been noticing major performance issues where the application drags and hangs for 30 seconds to sometimes 3 minutes when retreiving data and returning it to our web page. We use PHP as our front end. We have Zend Accellerator installed on the front end. IIS 6.0, MYSQL 4.0.25. The database size is about 600MB. We find that the database is slowest when more users (about 40-60) are logged into our application. When less users are on, the application is much faster.

Now, our developers know that they have to reprogram the app (queries, etc)., but in the meantime, we cant let our customer continue experiencing these issues. I know for sure that most of the problem has to do with the load on the server. It's a Dell 1850 with Dual Xeon Processors and about 4 Gigs of RAM. We are using MyISM tables. I am replicating to another server

Should I changeover to the NDB storage type and start clustering? I mean since it stores all of the data in memory, shouldn't that give me better performance? Should I setup a farm of slave servers and load balance them (which we really dont want to do). Any suggestions?

The following are the settings from my SHOW VARIABLES:

back_log 50 basedir d:\mysql\ bdb_cache_size 8388572 bdb_log_buffer_size 262144 bdb_home d:\mysql\data\ bdb_max_lock 10000 bdb_logdir bdb_shared_data OFF bdb_tmpdir C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ bdb_version Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 3.2.9a: (June 29, 2005) binlog_cache_size 32768 bulk_insert_buffer_size 8388608 character_set latin1 character_sets latin1 big5 czech euc_kr gb2312 gbk latin1_de sjis tis620 ujis dec8 dos german1 hp8 koi8_ru latin2 swe7 usa7 cp1251 danish hebrew win1251 estonia hungarian koi8_ukr win1251ukr greek win1250 croat cp1257 latin5 concurrent_insert ON connect_timeout 5 convert_character_set datadir d:\mysql\data\ default_week_format 0 delay_key_write ON delayed_insert_limit 100 delayed_insert_timeout 300 delayed_queue_size 1000 flush OFF flush_time 1800 ft_boolean_syntax + -><()~*:""&| ft_min_word_len 4 ft_max_word_len 254 ft_max_word_len_for_sort 20 ft_stopword_file (built-in) have_bdb YES have_crypt NO have_innodb DISABLED have_isam YES have_raid NO have_symlink YES have_openssl NO have_query_cache YES init_file innodb_additional_mem_pool_size 1048576 innodb_autoextend_increment 8 innodb_buffer_pool_size 8388608 innodb_data_file_path innodb_data_home_dir innodb_file_io_threads 4 innodb_force_recovery 0 innodb_thread_concurrency 8 innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit 1 innodb_fast_shutdown ON innodb_flush_method innodb_lock_wait_timeout 50 innodb_log_arch_dir innodb_log_archive OFF innodb_log_buffer_size 1048576 innodb_log_file_size 5242880 innodb_log_files_in_group 2 innodb_log_group_home_dir innodb_mirrored_log_groups 1 innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct 90 innodb_max_purge_lag 0 innodb_table_locks ON interactive_timeout 28800 join_buffer_size 131072 key_buffer_size 402653184 language d:\mysql\share\english\ large_files_support ON license GPL local_infile ON log OFF log_update OFF log_bin ON log_slave_updates OFF log_slow_queries OFF log_warnings 1 long_query_time 10 low_priority_updates OFF lower_case_file_system OFF lower_case_table_names 1 max_allowed_packet 1048576 max_binlog_cache_size 4294967295 max_binlog_size 1073741824 max_connections 100 max_connect_errors 10 max_delayed_threads 20 max_insert_delayed_threads 20 max_heap_table_size 16777216 max_join_size 4294967295 max_relay_log_size 0 max_seeks_for_key 4294967295 max_sort_length 1024 max_user_connections 0 max_tmp_tables 32 max_write_lock_count 4294967295 myisam_max_extra_sort_file_size 107374182400 myisam_max_sort_file_size 107374182400 myisam_repair_threads 1 myisam_recover_options OFF myisam_sort_buffer_size 214958080 net_buffer_length 16384 net_read_timeout 30 net_retry_count 10 net_write_timeout 60 new OFF open_files_limit 0 pid_file d:\mysql\data\PEMINIC-220.pid log_error .\PEMINIC-220.err port 3306 protocol_version 10 query_alloc_block_size 8192 query_cache_limit 1048576 query_cache_size 33554432 query_cache_type ON query_cache_wlock_invalidate OFF query_prealloc_size 8192 range_alloc_block_size 2048 read_buffer_size 126976 read_only OFF read_rnd_buffer_size 520192 rpl_recovery_rank 0 server_id 220 slave_net_timeout 3600 skip_external_locking ON skip_networking OFF skip_show_database OFF slow_launch_time 2 sort_buffer_size 262108 sql_mode 0 table_cache 512 table_type MYISAM thread_cache_size 0 thread_stack 196608 tx_isolation REPEATABLE-READ timezone Eastern Daylight Time tmp_table_size 108003328 tmpdir C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ transaction_alloc_block_size 8192 transaction_prealloc_size 4096 version 4.0.25-debug-log version_comment Official MySQL binary version_compile_os Win32 wait_timeout 28800

Here are the settings from my SHOW STATUS; The server was rebooted last night:

query result ( 133 records ) Variable_name Value Aborted_clients 38 Aborted_connects 0 Bytes_received 1581180041 Bytes_sent 759308829 Com_admin_commands 1 Com_alter_table 12 Com_analyze 0 Com_backup_table 0 Com_begin 0 Com_change_db 199443 Com_change_master 0 Com_check 0 Com_commit 0 Com_create_db 0 Com_create_function 0 Com_create_index 0 Com_create_table 6 Com_delete 198582 Com_delete_multi 0 Com_drop_db 0 Com_drop_function 0 Com_drop_index 0 Com_drop_table 6 Com_flush 0 Com_grant 0 Com_ha_close 0 Com_ha_open 0 Com_ha_read 0 Com_insert 270685 Com_insert_select 6 Com_kill 0 Com_load 0 Com_load_master_data 0 Com_load_master_table 0 Com_lock_tables 0 Com_optimize 0 Com_purge 0 Com_rename_table 0 Com_repair 0 Com_replace 0 Com_replace_select 0 Com_reset 0 Com_restore_table 0 Com_revoke 0 Com_rollback 0 Com_savepoint 0 Com_select 7562775 Com_set_option 0 Com_show_binlog_events 0 Com_show_binlogs 0 Com_show_create 0 Com_show_databases 3 Com_show_fields 448 Com_show_grants 0 Com_show_keys 0 Com_show_logs 0 Com_show_master_status 0 Com_show_new_master 0 Com_show_open_tables 0 Com_show_processlist 0 Com_show_slave_hosts 1 Com_show_slave_status 0 Com_show_status 2 Com_show_innodb_status 0 Com_show_tables 822 Com_show_variables 3 Com_slave_start 0 Com_slave_stop 0 Com_truncate 0 Com_unlock_tables 0 Com_update 148859 Com_update_multi 0 Connections 25056 Created_tmp_disk_tables 14297 Created_tmp_tables 47789 Created_tmp_files 1505 Delayed_insert_threads 0 Delayed_writes 0 Delayed_errors 0 Flush_commands 1 Handler_commit 0 Handler_delete 203212 Handler_read_first 1634 Handler_read_key 119597882 Handler_read_next 385473718 Handler_read_prev 192056 Handler_read_rnd 240959228 Handler_read_rnd_next 179152782 Handler_rollback 0 Handler_update 245049083 Handler_write 233387494 Key_blocks_used 373653 Key_read_requests 813389205 Key_reads 362072 Key_write_requests 2227702 Key_writes 1563640 Max_used_connections 45 Not_flushed_key_blocks 0 Not_flushed_delayed_rows 0 Open_tables 76 Open_files 125 Open_streams 0 Opened_tables 3226 Questions 13246292 Qcache_queries_in_cache 13925 Qcache_inserts 7018431 Qcache_hits 4839559 Qcache_lowmem_prunes 4796337 Qcache_not_cached 544344 Qcache_free_memory 17765096 Qcache_free_blocks 5342 Qcache_total_blocks 33291 Rpl_status NULL Select_full_join 11740 Select_full_range_join 10 Select_range 12863 Select_range_check 0 Select_scan 117665 Slave_open_temp_tables 0 Slave_running OFF Slow_launch_threads 0 Slow_queries 89 Sort_merge_passes 1046 Sort_range 257693 Sort_rows 18264167 Sort_scan 80339 Table_locks_immediate 8913947 Table_locks_waited 27323 Threads_cached 0 Threads_created 25055 Threads_connected 4 Threads_running 4 Uptime 58588