Inspired by Baron's earlier post, here is one I hear quite frequently -

"If you enable innodb_file_per_table, each table is it's own .ibd file.  You can then relocate the heavy hit tables to a different location and create symlinks to the original location."

There are a few things wrong with this advice:

1. InnoDB does not support these symlinks.  If you run an ALTER TABLE command, what you will find is that a new temporary table is created (in the original location!), the symlink is destroyed, and the temporary table is renamed.  Your "optimization" is lost.
2. Striping (with RAID) is usually a far better optimization.  Striping a table across multiple disks effectively balances the  'heavy hit' access across many more disks.  With 1 disk/table you are …

Innodb monitors show information about innodb internal status - which could be used for performance tuning. Lets break down the output of show engine innodb status and get a look at what is happening and how it can be improved. Just fire the "Show engine innodb status" command and check the Output.mysql> show engine innodb status\G*************************** 1. row ***************************

I had written about this but mostly in parts. Here is a step by step guide to optimizing mysql. Following variables should be looked into for optimizing mysql.Memory consumption: Total memory consumption should be less than the available RAM. You should also leave a small amount of memory for the OS. Total memory consumption can be calculated using this formula (for myisam tables):Key_buffer + (