Chunk Change: InnoDB Buffer Pool Resizing

Since MySQL 5.7.5, we have been able to resize dynamically the InnoDB Buffer Pool. This new feature also introduced a new variable — innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size — which defines the chunk size by which the buffer pool is enlarged or reduced. This variable is not dynamic, and if it is incorrectly configured, it could lead to undesired situations.

Let's see first how innodb_buffer_pool_size, innodb_buffer_pool_instances, and innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size interact:

The buffer pool can hold several instances, and each instance is divided into chunks. There is some information that we need to take into account: the number of instances can go from 1 to 64, and the total amount of chunks should not exceed 1000.

So, for a server with 3GB RAM, a buffer pool of 2GB with 8 instances, and chunks at default value (128MB), we are going to get 2 chunks per instance:

This means that there will be 16 chunks.

I'm not going to explain the benefits of having multiple instances, I will focus on resizing operations. Why would you want to resize the buffer pool? Well, there are several reasons, such as:

• On a virtual server, you can add more memory dynamically.
• For a physical server, you might want to reduce database memory usage to make way for other processes.
• On systems where the database size is smaller than available RAM.
• If you expect a huge growth and want to increase the buffer pool on demand.

Reducing the Buffer Pool

Let's start reducing the buffer pool:

| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 2147483648 |
| innodb_buffer_pool_instances | 8     |
| innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size | 134217728 |
mysql> set global innodb_buffer_pool_size=1073741824;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> show global variables like 'innodb_buffer_pool_size';
+-------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name           | Value      |
+-------------------------+------------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 1073741824 |
+-------------------------+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

If we try to decrease it to 1.5GB, the buffer pool will not change and a warning will be shown:

mysql> set global innodb_buffer_pool_size=1610612736;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)
mysql> show warnings;
+---------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Level   | Code | Message                                                                         |
+---------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Warning | 1210 | InnoDB: Cannot resize buffer pool to lesser than chunk size of 134217728 bytes. |
+---------+------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show global variables like 'innodb_buffer_pool_size';
+-------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name           | Value      |
+-------------------------+------------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 2147483648 |
+-------------------------+------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

Increasing the Buffer Pool

When we try to increase the value from 1GB to 1.5GB, the buffer pool is resized, but the requested innodb_buffer_pool_size is considered to be incorrect and is truncated:

And the final size is 2GB. Yes! You intended to set the value to 1.5GB, and you succeeded in setting it to 2GB. Even if you set 1 byte higher, like setting: 1073741825, you will end up with a buffer pool of 2GB.

Interesting Scenarios

Increasing Size in the Config File

Let's suppose one day you get up willing to change or tune some variables in your server, and you decide that as you have free memory, you will increase the buffer pool. In this example, we are going to use a server with 2GB of buffer pool size, which will be increased to 2.5GB

So, we set in the configuration file:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 2684354560

But then, after restart, we found:

mysql> show global variables like 'innodb_buffer_pool_%size' ;
+-------------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name                 | Value      |
+-------------------------------+------------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size | 134217728  |
| innodb_buffer_pool_size       | 4294967296 |
+-------------------------------+------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

And the error log says:

2018-05-02T21:52:43.568054Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 4G, instances = 16, chunk size = 128M

So, after we have set innodb_buffer_pool_size in the config file to 2.5GB, the database gives us a 4GB buffer pool, because of the number of instances and the chunk size. What the message doesn't tell us is the number of chunks, and this would be useful to understand why such a huge difference.

Let's take a look at how that's calculated.

Increasing Instances and Chunk Size

Changing the number of instances or the chunk size will require a restart and will take into consideration the buffer pool size as an upper limit to set the chunk size. For instance, with this configuration:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 2147483648
innodb_buffer_pool_instances = 32
innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size = 134217728

We get this chunk size:

mysql> show global variables like 'innodb_buffer_pool_%size' ;
+-------------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name                 | Value      |
+-------------------------------+------------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size | 67108864   |
| innodb_buffer_pool_size       | 2147483648 |
+-------------------------------+------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

However, we need to understand how this is really working. To get the innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size it will make this calculation: innodb_buffer_pool_size / innodb_buffer_pool_instances with the result rounded to a multiple of 1MB.

In our example, the calculation will be 2147483648 / 32 = 67108864, which 67108864%1048576=0, no rounding needed. The number of chunks will be one chunk per instance.

When does it consider that it needs to use more chunks per instance? When the difference between the required size and the innodb_buffer_pool_size configured in the file is greater or equal to 1MB.

That is why, for instance, if you try to set the innodb_buffer_pool_size equal to 1GB + 1MB - 1B, you will get 1GB of buffer pool:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1074790399
innodb_buffer_pool_instances = 16
innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size = 67141632
2018-05-07T09:26:43.328313Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 1G, instances = 16, chunk size = 64M

However, if you set the innodb_buffer_pool_size equals to 1GB + 1MB, you will get 2GB of buffer pool:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 1074790400
innodb_buffer_pool_instances = 16
innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size = 67141632
2018-05-07T09:25:48.204032Z 0 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, total size = 2G, instances = 16, chunk size = 64M

This is because it considers that two chunks will fit. We can say that this is how the InnoDB Buffer pool size is calculated:

determine_best_chunk_size{
  if innodb_buffer_pool_size / innodb_buffer_pool_instances < innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size
  then
    innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size = roundDownMB(innodb_buffer_pool_size / innodb_buffer_pool_instances)
  fi
}
determine_amount_of_chunks{
  innodb_buffer_amount_chunks_per_instance = roundDown(innodb_buffer_pool_size / innodb_buffer_pool_instances / innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size)
  if innodb_buffer_amount_chunks_per_instance * innodb_buffer_pool_instances * innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size - innodb_buffer_pool_size > 1024*1024
  then
    innodb_buffer_amount_chunks_per_instance++
  fi
}
determine_best_chunk_size
determine_amount_of_chunks
innodb_buffer_pool_size = innodb_buffer_pool_instances * innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size * innodb_buffer_amount_chunks_per_instance

What Is the Best Setting?

In order to analyze the best setting, you will need to know that there is an upper limit of 1000 chunks. In our example with 16 instances, we can have no more than 62 chunks per instance.

Another thing to consider is what each chunk represents in percentage terms. Continuing with the example, each chunk per instance represents 1.61%, which means that we can increase or decrease the complete buffer pool size in multiples of this percentage.

From a management point of view, I think that you might want to consider at least a range of 2% to 5% to increase or decrease the buffer. I performed some tests to see the impact of having small chunks and I found no issues but this is something that needs to be thoroughly tested.