A useful article explaining how to identify bottlenecks in a system by using iostat.

Pro MySQL, a brand new book by Mike Kruckenberg and Jay Pipes (Apress, July 2005, ISBN 1-59059-505-X), provides intermediate and advanced MySQL users with a comprehensive guide to the array of features available in MySQL upto and including MySQL 5.0 Since the MySQL Developer Zone has had quite a few articles related to the new MySQL 5.0 features, we chose to publish chapter 6 covering another hot topic, \"Benchmarking and Profiling\". This is one of the first books to cover MySQL 5 in depth. It foregoes the usual reiteration of basics that you'll find in other books, instead concentrating on MySQL's advanced applications in enterprise environments. Further, this book doubles as a quick reference guide for configuration directives, commands, and features. The book's own companion web site is at http://www.promysql.com/(2005-08-03)

The best way to performance tune a system is to find out what your bottlenecks are, and attacking those first. In the first part of this session, I'll be looking at some of the issues faced with common database workloads. From there, I'll then be showing how you can get more information out of MySQL and your Operating System to find out about your workload. This session is designed for beginner to intermediate MySQL users.