Your MySQL server can perform only as well as its weakest link, and the operating system and the hardware on which it runs are often limiting factors. The disk size, the available memory and CPU resources, the network, and the components that link them all limit the system’s ultimate capacity. Thus, you need to choose your hardware carefully, and configure the hardware and operating system appropriately. For example, if your workload is I/O-bound, one approach is to design your application to minimize MySQL’s I/O workload. However, it’s often smarter to upgrade the I/O subsystem, install more memory, or reconfigure existing disks.

Hardware changes very rapidly, so anything we write about particular products or components in this chapter will become outdated quickly. As usual, our goal is to help improve your understanding so that you can apply your knowledge in situations we don’t cover directly. However, we will use currently available hardware to illustrate our points.