How to Improve Your Database Performance

Database access is the most important feature for most of the applications. Thus, it is important for enterprises to improve their database performance. You can speed up your applications by tuning your database performance. Databases are the most important thing for your applications. They are responsible for the proper functioning of critical processes. There are various tweaks that you can use for fine-tuning your database performance.

1. Check your server

First, you should make sure that your database server has sufficient hardware available. You should check your server disk space, memory, and CPU.

•  CPU

If you think that your database is underperforming, then it is time to upgrade your CPU unit. You should measure your CPU performance. It is important to monitor your CPU ready times. This will help you in understanding your CPU utilization. Also, make sure that you are using at least two CPU cores. Your CPUs will also have an impact on your licensing. Thus, make sure that your CPU count matches your database server license. Otherwise, you might overspend on your equipment.

•  Memory

Most people think that the most important metric is memory usage. But, this won’t help you in understanding the main issue. Instead, you should check the page faults per second. If you are having thousands of page faults, then your server is running out of memory. Thus, you must expand your memory.

•  Disk Space

The database actually uses more disk space than they actually require. Most of the NoSQL databases will eat a lot of your disk space. MongoDB is a good option because it will take less RAM. But, it will end up eating all your disk space. Thus, you have to make sure that you have enough disk space available for your server. You should also run your database on dedicated hard disks. This will ensure that other processes won’t cause disk fragmentation errors.

You should always monitor your disk latency. If your disk latency is increasing, then your database performance will go down. You can deal with this by using a database caching mechanism. It will help you in optimizing your database performance. You can also add more hard disks for increasing your server performance.

2. Optimize your queries

Most of the database performance issues occur due to poor queries. You can use subqueries for making the coding task easier. But, it can have a negative effect on your database performance.

Coding loops can generate hundreds of unnecessary requests. This will slow down your database. You should avoid using cursors which are generally used in SQL servers. It is difficult to manually optimize your SQL queries. Thus, you must use a query optimizer for optimizing your queries. It will automatically speed up your SQL queries. There are various query optimizers available in the market that you can use for optimizing your queries.

3. Measure your connection capacity

Sometimes your connection acquisition can increase your database response time. In such cases, you must reconfigure your connection pool. You should check your server capacity by monitoring various metrics. Try to monitor your server by increasing the number of connections or load until your disk performance, memory or CPU hits its limit. If you need more connections, then it is time to upgrade your hardware. This will make sure that your server can support your applications.

4. Database Version

If you are using the old MySQL version, then it can affect your database performance. It is important to make sure that you are using the updated version of your database. This will help you in improving your database overall performance. Some queries might run faster on older versions. But, updated MySQL version will give you overall better performance.

5. Don’t forget about your network

Most people forget about the physical constraints of their virtualized infrastructure. There are various physical constraints like bad routers or cables that you must consider. You should always monitor your network metrics. If some problem suddenly appeared after years or months, then your infrastructure might be suffering from a physical problem. You should check your cables and routers. Also, try to address this problem in its early stages. You should try to fix this problem before it can affect your daily operations.

6. Data defragmentation

Data defragmentation is another common cause of a slow database. You might have stored thousands of records in your database. After some time, all these records will be fragmented in your disk. The defragmentation will allow group all the relevant data together. Thus, I/O relations will run faster. This will affect your database and query performance. But, you must have enough disk space available for your database. If you want to improve your database performance, then you must try to use disk defragmentation.

7. Identify which application is accessing your database

Sometimes a single service or application can affect your database performance. Thus, you should monitor which services are actually using your database. If some service or application is suffering from bad database performance, then you must evaluate its metrics.

If all your applications are experiencing bad database performance, then the problem is mostly with your host. You should try to increase your disk space. But, if only a single application is experiencing bad database performance, then you must do some research on that application.

Conclusion

Databases are the most important applications for your enterprise. Make sure that your databases have enough resources available. This will help your database in performing at their best. You should check your host health. Sometimes you can improve your database performance by buying more hardware. Also, make sure that you are using the latest database version. There are various query optimizers available in the market that you can use for optimizing your SQL queries. You need to first investigate the cause of bad database performance. After that, you must try to remove these bottlenecks.

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