Cloud Performance

Context

This is why you need to learn about the reality of using MySQL in the cloud:

MySQL in the cloud is fundamentally the same MySQL that you know and love (or know and tolerate). In the cloud, best practices and techniques are not only true but eminently true because cloud providers charge for every byte and millisecond of work. Performance is money in the cloud.

I wish it were as simple as “optimize the workload and you’re done”, but MySQL in the cloud raises unique considerations. The goal is to know and mitigate these cloud considerations so that you can focus on MySQL, not the cloud. After all, the cloud is nothing special: behind the proverbial curtain, it’s physical servers in a data center running programs like MySQL.

Excerpt from Efficient MySQL Performance, Chapter 10
Copyright 2021 Daniel Nichter
No reproduction of this excerpt without permission

Key Points

Code and feature compatibility of MySQL varies in the cloud
Your due diligence is to know any code or feature incompatibilities compared to open-source MySQL
MySQL can be partially or fully managed, depending on cloud provider or third-party company
Network latency over wide-area networks increases query response time by tens or hundreds of milliseconds
Data for MySQL in the cloud is usually stored on network-attached storage
Network-attached storage has single-digit millisecond latency, which is equivalent to a spinning disk
The cloud charges for everything, and costs can (and often do) go over budget
Cloud providers offer discounts; don’t pay full price

Pitfalls

Believing cloud vendor claims at face value
Not doing your own research and benchmarks in the cloud
Surprising cloud spend: not carefully calculating costs ahead of time
Slower than expected cloud performance, especially long tail latency
“Managed” database solution still needs a lot of user management
Cloud provider is slow to detect and fail over a failed MySQL instance
Not having SUPER privileges in MySQL

Hack MySQL Articles

Additional Resources

Resource	Type	About
Which Cloud Provider Performs Better for My MySQL Workload? by Ananias Tsalouchidis @ Percona	Article	It’s important to read as many independent cloud benchmarks and comparisons as possible, like this one
Maximizing Performance of AWS RDS for MySQL with Dedicated Log Volumes by Kedar Vaijanapurkar @ Percona	Article	It’s also important to learn about new cloud features because the vendors do make improvements, like this one

Source: https://hackmysql.com/learn/cloud-performance/
Copyright 2025 Daniel Nichter