Amazon RDS for MySQL now supports pre-warming InnoDB buffer pool on reboot

Posted on: Sep 3, 2014

You can now configure your MySQL 5.6 instances to pre-warm their InnoDB buffer pool on reboot. This capability enhances a DB Instance's ability to deliver high performance quickly after a planned reboot: for example, as part of an instance-type scaling operation, a minor version upgrade, a parameter change, or other planned maintenance.

The InnoDB buffer pool is an in-memory data store that caches the contents of recently and frequently-accessed disk pages. MySQL starts with an empty buffer pool; this pool fills as disk I/O operations are performed to new pages. The new feature works by causing the buffer pool to be saved to disk on planned shutdown, and to be loaded from disk during the reboot process. The feature also provides you the ability, using MySQL stored procedures, to perform buffer-pool dumps and loads on demand.

DB Instances launched or last rebooted before August 14, 2014, will need to be rebooted to gain access to the new feature. No action is required to gain access to the feature on DB Instances launched or rebooted on or after August 14, 2014.

To learn more about this feature, please refer to the MySQL InnoDB cache warming section of the Amazon RDS User's guide.