New Server Problems - Advice needed

[Flash477]

Hi Guys

I'm hoping that you guys will be able to help me out with an issue that I am having with a new server I have just got (which is the second server with the same company, an upgrade to replace the older one).

Now the issue that I am having is this:

I was preparing the server to start transferring over sites and databases, using the same config as I have on my other server. But when I came to try and import a 365K MySQL dump, it takes a couple of minutes to complete, and the load average during this time goes up to around 2.50! and that is with nothing else running on the server. The CPU and memory are hardly touched.

Now I know this is not right, and I have been in contact with Support, who have done some tests and checked the disks etc, but they say there is no issue - to which I call bull!, but just want some further advice before going back to them.

The server does run RAID 1, but then so does my other server, so I'm not thinking that is the problem.

The only real thing that I can see is that when I run iotop, kjournald is taking around 80-90% of the IO which seems far too high.

[aidanjt]

If the volume which contains your /var/lib/mysql can be safely mounted with noatimes (as in, the volume doesn't depend on atimes for something, like say a mail spool), you should do that. Also check that it's isn't mounted with fsync, otherwise every disk write is going to hurt a lot. The database engine you're using can make a big difference too, iirc InnoDB's transactional nature requires heavy fsync use to guarantee on-disk committal, so if you don't need transactions (only 1 process really writes to the tables), then you'd be better off with MyISAM.

Those are a few things off the top of my head.