Benchmark(et)ing with InnoDB redo log size

What is a typical InnoDB redo log size? By size I mean the product of innodb_log_file_size and innodb_log_files_in_group. A typical setup for me is 4gb via 2gb/file and 2 files.

Using a large InnoDB redo log can help performance but it comes at a cost. I have been using a 4gb redo log in my tests because that is what we frequently use in production. Dimitri mentioned using a 32gb redo log to show great throughput for InnoDB in recent releases. Here I share results from the insert benchmark with a 4gb, 8gb, 16gb and 32gb redo log.

tl;dr - conclusions specific to my test

1. A larger redo log improves throughput
2. A larger redo log helps more with slower storage than with faster storage because page writeback is more of a bottleneck with slower storage and a larger redo log reduces writeback.
3. A larger redo log can help more when the working set is cached because there are no stalls from storage reads and storage writes are more likely to be a bottleneck.
4. InnoDB in MySQL 5.7.17 is much faster than 5.6.35 in all cases except IO-bound + fast SSD

A larger redo log means that less checkpoint IO will be done and less IO is good. But there are costs with a larger redo log. It uses more storage and you might not want to spend 32gb of SSD for the redo log. It makes crash recovery slower. With buffered IO you can have 32gb of redo log competing to stay in the OS page cache and waste memory. Finally when using a disk-array, the read-before-write that occurs with buffered IO means that redo log writes may be wasting too much IO.

Configuration

I used my insert benchmark client with two test servers -- one with slow SSD that does ~10k IOPs and one with fast SSD that does more than 100k IOPs. Both servers have 24 cores, 48 HW-threads and 256gb of RAM. Tests were repeated for an in-memory workload (insert 500m rows) and an IO-bound workload (limit server RAM to 50gb and insert 2b rows). The test used 16 tables, 16 clients and each client inserted rows to a different table. Typical command line were:
    # insert 500m rows
    bash iq.sh innodb "" /path/to/bin/mysql /path/to/datadir md2 \

        1 16 no no no 0 no 500000000

    # insert 2b rows
    bash iq.sh innodb "" /path/to/bin/mysql /path/to/datadir md2 \
        1 16 no no no 0 no 2000000000

Test were run with upstream MySQL 5.6.35 and 5.7.17. I used these my.cnf files for 5.7.17 and 5.6.35. I compiled MySQL from source and used jemalloc. The benchmark client ran on the same host as mysqld to remove variance from the network. The binlog is enabled but sync on commit is disabled for InnoDB and the binlog to support faster insert rates.

In-memory load

For the in-memory load the redo log size has more impact with slow SSD than with fast SSD. From the In-memory load metrics section below you can see the benefit from a larger redo log. It reduces the amount of data written to storage per insert by more than half (see the wKB/i column) when going from a 4gb to a 32gb redo log. For fast SSD with 5.7.17, InnoDB writes to storage 5.31 KB/insert with a 4gb redo log versus 1.66 KB/insert with a 32gb redo log. Similar reductions occur for slow SSD and for 5.6.35. The larger redo log helps slow SSD more than fast SSD based on the reduction in wKB/i.

In-memory load metrics

Legend:

• ips.av, ips.99 - average and p99 insert rates. The 99th percentile is computed from the per-interval rates where the interval is ~10 seconds.
• wKB/i, rKB/i - KB written to and KB read from storage per inserted row. Measured by iostat.
• r/i - storage reads per inserted row. Measured by iostat.
• Mcpu/i - relative CPU overhead per inserted row. Measured by vmstat us and sy columns.
• size - database size in GB at test end
• rss - mysqld RSS in GB at test end
• wMB/s, rMB/s - average MB/second written to and read from storage. Measured by iostat.
• r/s - average storage reads/second. Measured by iostat.
• cpu - average CPU utilization. Measured by vmstat us and sy columns.
• engine - database engine. none means that no compression was used. 150g and 35g are the size of the InnoDB buffer pool. redoX is the size of the InnoDB redo log.

Fast SSD

ips.av  ips.99  wKB/i   Mcpu/i  size    rss  wMB/s   cpu  engine
232666   9925   5.31    176      97   104.4 1235.1  41.0  inno5717.none.150g.redo4
286041  16559   3.46    162      97   104.1  989.0  46.4  inno5717.none.150g.redo8
292740  17587   2.41    157      97   104.3  706.5  46.0  inno5717.none.150g.redo16
295683  18009   1.66    154      97   104.1  490.6  45.5  inno5717.none.150g.redo32
 92404   3504   5.11    201      97   106.2  472.5  18.6  inno5635.none.150g.redo4
134844   5987   2.97    192      97   106.1  400.8  25.8  inno5635.none.150g.redo8
169319   9247   2.02    176      97   106.1  342.5  29.8  inno5635.none.150g.redo16
171116  10165   1.74    175      97   106.2  297.9  30.0  inno5635.none.150g.redo32

Slow SSD

ips.av ips.99  wKB/i Mcpu/i size    rss   wMB/s   cpu     engine
 68672   3277  4.95     165   97  104.4   339.9   11.3    inno5717.none.150g.redo2
 95896   4518  2.67     154   97  104.4   256.4   14.7    inno5717.none.150g.redo4
131787   5868  1.47     135   97  104.4   194.2   17.8    inno5717.none.150g.redo8
177179   7231  0.85     130   97  104.3   151.3   23.0    inno5717.none.150g.redo16
 38058   1691  5.01     176   97  106.3   190.6    6.7    inno5635.none.150g.redo2
 52493   2537  2.74     156   97  106.3   144.0    8.2    inno5635.none.150g.redo4
 61043   2660  1.64     151   97  106.3   100.2    9.2    inno5635.none.150g.redo8
 71317   2914  1.26     145   97  106.3    89.5   10.3    inno5635.none.150g.redo16

IO-bound load

For the IO-bound load and fast SSD the redo log size has little impact for 5.7.17 and some impact for 5.6.35. For slow SSD the redo log size has more impact. But compared to the in-memory results above the impact from redo log size is much less for the IO-bound workload. From the IO-bound load metrics section below the reduction in wKB/i is less for IO-bound than for in-memory workloads but increasing the redo log from 4gb to 32gb still reduces the write rate in half for slow SSD per the wKB/i column.

Per the ips.av column InnoDB with 5.7.17 isn't much faster than 5.6.35 for the fast SSD. It is still much faster for the slow SSD.

IO-bound load metrics

Fast SSD

ips.av ips.99  r/i   rKB/i wKB/i Mcpu/i size  rss   r/s  rMB/s  wMB/s   cpu  engine
 61711   3353  0.09  1.48 14.65  562    402   4.0  5698   91.2  904.3  34.7  inno5717.none.35g.redo2
 62929   3471  0.09  1.47 11.39  546    402   4.0  5771   92.3  717.0  34.4  inno5717.none.35g.redo4
 63593   2542  0.10  1.54 11.01  554    404   4.0  6133   98.1  700.2  35.2  inno5717.none.35g.redo8
 63959   3419  0.09  1.43 10.11  535    402   4.0  5732   91.7  646.6  34.2  inno5717.none.35g.redo16
 45874   1790  0.11  1.71 11.25  585    402  43.2  4915   78.6  516.0  26.8  inno5635.none.35g.redo2
 58682   2500  0.10  1.55  8.57  589    403  43.2  5667   90.7  502.8  34.6  inno5635.none.35g.redo4
 59179   2285  0.10  1.52  8.30  581    402  43.2  5607   89.7  491.2  34.4  inno5635.none.35g.redo8
 59312   2473  0.10  1.56  8.36  593    403  43.2  5776   92.4  495.7  35.2  inno5635.none.35g.redo16

Slow SSD

ips.av ips.99  r/i   rKB/i wKB/i Mcpu/i size  rss   r/s  rMB/s  wMB/s   cpu  engine
 34101   1975  0.10  1.60 10.91  402    400  39.7  3412   54.6  372.0  13.7  inno5717.none.35g.redo2
 46712   1837  0.09  1.49  7.29  433    403  39.9  4362   69.8  340.7  20.2  inno5717.none.35g.redo4
 45231   1649  0.10  1.54  5.34  420    404  40.0  4355   69.7  241.5  19.0  inno5717.none.35g.redo8
 49244   1750  0.10  1.56  6.39  454    403  40.0  4803   76.9  314.5  22.4  inno5717.none.35g.redo16
 17654    605  0.18  2.79 12.22  448    398  43.2  3083   49.3  215.7   7.9  inno5635.none.35g.redo2
 26607    863  0.12  1.86  7.56  438    402  43.2  3099   49.6  201.2  11.7  inno5635.none.35g.redo4
 28069   1143  0.09  1.51  5.50  398    403  43.2  2650   42.4  154.2  11.2  inno5635.none.35g.redo8
 30734   1276  0.09  1.50  5.01  407    403  43.2  2882   46.1  153.9  12.5  inno5635.none.35g.redo16

In-memory throughput over time

The results above show average throughput and that hides a lot of interesting behavior. We expect throughput over time to not suffer from variance -- for both InnoDB and for MyRocks. For many of the results below there is a lot of variance (jitter).

Fast SSD

InnoDB suffers from jitter with 4gb and 8gb redo logs and the problem is much worse for 5.6.35. Another problem occurs with a 4gb redo log -- throughput drops over time. That problem repeats for an 8gb redo log with 5.6.35.

Slow SSD

With slow SSD jitter is much worse for 5.7.17 than for 5.6.35 and the difference is more significant with the larger redo log. Throughput also drops over time for 5.7.17. This is a surprising result.

IO-bound throughput over time

Fast SSD

MySQL 5.6.35 suffers from jitter while 5.7.17 suffers from throughput dropping over time. Although the drop in 5.7 might be reasonable assuming this occurs because the working set doesn't fit in cache and storage reads must be done during index maintenance. It is also interesting that 5.7.17 becomes as slow as 5.6.35 over time.

Slow SSD

Both 5.6.35 and 5.7.17 suffer from jitter.