db-bench.sh

A sysbench-based database benchmarking script. All options are configured through environment variables with sensible defaults.

Environment Variables

Directories

Variable	Default	Description
WORKSPACE	$PWD	Root workspace directory. Used as the base for other directory defaults.
TEMPLATE_PATH	$WORKSPACE/template_datadir	Path to the template data directory used for preparing benchmark runs.
CACHE_DIR	$WORKSPACE/results_cache	Directory for caching benchmark results.
BENCH_DIR	$WORKSPACE	Base directory for benchmark output. A subdirectory named $BENCH_NAME is created within it.
DATA_DIR	$WORKSPACE	Base directory for database data. A subdirectory named ${BENCH_NAME}-datadir is created within it.
BENCH_NAME	(required)	Name of the benchmark run. Used to derive BENCH_DIR and DATA_DIR subdirectory names.

General

Variable	Default	Description
ENGINE	innodb	Database engine type. Supported values: innodb, rocksdb, postgres.
BUILD_PATH	(required)	Path to the database server binaries (e.g. MySQL/Percona Server or PostgreSQL bin directory).
CONFIG_FILES	(required)	Space-separated list of server configuration files to iterate over. See ./cnf/ for available presets.
EXTRA_CONFIG_FILES	(unset)	Space-separated list of extra config files. All files are appended to the main config file. File names prefixed with extra- are shown without the prefix in email subjects (e.g. cnf/extra-no-ACID.cnf cnf/extra-nproc64.cnf appears as +no-ACID+nproc64). See ./cnf/extra-*.cnf for available extras.
RUN_NAME	(unset)	Human-readable name for the benchmark run, used in email subjects and Slack messages.
BENCHMARK_LOGGING	Y	Enable or disable verbose benchmark logging including CPU, memory, iostat, dstat (Y/N).
SMART_DEVICE	/dev/nvme0n1	Block device used for S.M.A.R.T. disk statistics collection.
WORKLOAD_NAMES	reads,writes	Comma-separated list of workload names or aliases to run. See db-bench/workloads.inc for all available workloads and aliases (e.g. reads, writes, pg_writes, mixed, mixed_trx, heavy_trx, prod_trx).
SCALING_GOVERNOR	(unset)	CPU scaling governor to set during the benchmark (e.g. performance). When set, also disables address randomization and turbo boost.
DISABLE_IDLE_STATES	(unset)	Set to yes to disable CPU idle states during the benchmark (requires SCALING_GOVERNOR).
BACKUP_DIR	(unset)	Directory to copy result archives and CSV files to after the benchmark completes.
RESULTS_EMAIL	(unset)	Email address to send benchmark results to (requires mutt).
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL	(unset)	Slack webhook URL for posting benchmark results.

Database / Sysbench

Variable	Default	Description
ENGINE_CACHE	32G	Size of the database engine cache. Maps to innodb_buffer_pool_size (InnoDB), rocksdb_block_cache_size (RocksDB), or shared_buffers (PostgreSQL).
NUM_TABLES	16	Number of sysbench tables to create and benchmark against. Also used as the thread count during the data-preparation phase.
DATASIZE	10M	Number of rows per table in SI notation (e.g. 1M = 1,000,000 rows, 10M = 10,000,000 rows). Converted via numfmt --from=si.
DB_USER	root	Database user for sysbench connections.
RAND_TYPE	uniform	Random number distribution type (uniform, gaussian, special, pareto).
RAND_SEED	1111	Seed for the random number generator, ensuring reproducible runs.
THREADS_LIST	1 4 16 64 128 256 512 1024	Space-separated list of thread counts to benchmark.
SYSBENCH_REPORT_INTERVAL	10	Interval in seconds between periodic sysbench statistics reports.
SYSBENCH_BIN	sysbench	Path or name of the sysbench binary.
SYSBENCH_LUA	/usr/local/share/sysbench	Directory containing sysbench Lua scripts.
SYSBENCH_WRITE	oltp_write_only.lua	Lua script used for write workloads during database preparation.
SYSBENCH_READ	oltp_read_only.lua	Lua script used for read workloads during warmup (when WORKLOAD_WARMUP_TIME > 0).
SYSBENCH_EXTRA	(unset)	Extra options appended to every sysbench invocation.
SYSBENCH_HOST	(unset)	Hostname for remote sysbench connections. When set, connects via TCP instead of a local socket.
REBUILD_TEMPLATE	(unset)	Set to ON to force rebuilding the template data directory even if one already exists.

Timing

Variable	Default	Description
PS_START_TIMEOUT	300	Maximum time in seconds to wait for the database server to start.
WORKLOAD_WARMUP_TIME	0	Warmup time in seconds before each sysbench workload measurement begins.
WARMUP_TIME_SECONDS	0	Additional warmup period in seconds (e.g. for cache warming).
RUN_TIME_SECONDS	600	Overall run time in seconds. Used as the default for WRITES_TIME_SECONDS.
WRITES_TIME_SECONDS	$RUN_TIME_SECONDS (600)	Duration in seconds for write workloads.
READS_TIME_SECONDS	$WRITES_TIME_SECONDS / 2 (300)	Duration in seconds for read workloads. Defaults to half of the write duration.

Server Options

Variable	Default	Description
MYEXTRA	(unset)	Extra command-line options passed to the database server (e.g. --disable-log-bin).
PERF_EXTRA	(unset)	Extra performance-schema instrumentation options (e.g. --performance-schema-instrument='wait/synch/mutex/innodb/%=ON').
SSL_CERTS_PATH	(unset)	Path to SSL certificate files. When set, enables SSL for both the server and sysbench connections.
INSTALL_SQL_PATH	(unset)	Path to an SQL file to execute on server start (MySQL only).
SETUP_SQL_PATH	(unset)	Path to an SQL file to execute after INSTALL_SQL_PATH (MySQL only).
RUN_SQL_COMMANDS	(unset)	SQL commands to execute inline on each server start (MySQL only).
PG_TDE	OFF	PostgreSQL Transparent Data Encryption mode. Supported values: OFF, ON (enables WAL encryption), TABLE (table-level encryption only).

Usage

# Minimal example (required: BENCH_NAME, BUILD_PATH, CONFIG_FILES)
export BENCH_NAME=my-test
export BUILD_PATH=/path/to/mysql/install
export CONFIG_FILES=/path/to/my.cnf
./db-bench.sh

# Custom engine, cache size, and data dimensions
ENGINE=rocksdb ENGINE_CACHE=64G NUM_TABLES=32 DATASIZE=1M \
  BENCH_NAME=my-test BUILD_PATH=/path/to/mysql CONFIG_FILES=/path/to/my.cnf \
  ./db-bench.sh

# PostgreSQL with reduced run time
ENGINE=postgres BENCH_NAME=pg-test BUILD_PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin \
  CONFIG_FILES=/path/to/postgresql.conf RUN_TIME_SECONDS=120 \
  ./db-bench.sh

---

build-and-bench.sh

A wrapper script that automates the full workflow: clone and build the database server and sysbench from source, then run db-bench.sh. All db-bench.sh environment variables listed above are supported and passed through.

Environment Variables

Directories

Variable	Default	Description
ROOT_DIR	/mnt/fast/build-and-bench	Root directory for all source trees, build artifacts, and results.
SERVER_REPO_DIR	$ROOT_DIR/postgres or $ROOT_DIR/src_mysql	Local clone of the database server repository (auto-selected by ENGINE).
SERVER_BUILD_DIR	$ROOT_DIR/$SERVER_BRANCH-rel-$SELECTED_CC	Directory where the server is compiled.
SYSBENCH_REPO_DIR	$ROOT_DIR/sysbench	Local clone of the sysbench repository.
DBBENCH_REPO_DIR	$ROOT_DIR/db-bench	Local clone of the db-bench (perf-tests) repository.

Server Source

Variable	Default (MySQL)	Default (PostgreSQL)	Description
ENGINE	innodb	postgres	Determines which server is built and which defaults apply.
SERVER_REPO_URL	https://github.com/percona/percona-server	https://github.com/percona/postgres	Git URL of the database server repository.
SERVER_BRANCH	8.0	TDE_REL_17_STABLE	Git branch or tag to check out and build.

Sysbench Source

Variable	Default	Description
SYSBENCH_REPO_URL	https://github.com/inikep/sysbench	Git URL of the sysbench repository.
SYSBENCH_BRANCH	mdcallag	Git branch or tag of sysbench to build.

db-bench Source

Variable	Default	Description
DBBENCH_REPO_URL	https://github.com/Percona-QA/perf-tests.git	Git URL of the db-bench repository.
DBBENCH_BRANCH	3.1	Git branch or tag of db-bench to use.

Build

Variable	Default	Description
SELECTED_CC	gcc-13	C compiler to use for building the server.
SELECTED_CXX	g++-13	C++ compiler to use for building the server.
WITH_PGO	off	Set to on or 1 to build MySQL/Percona Server with PGO (profile guided optimization). Ignored for ENGINE=postgres.
FPROFILE_DIR	$SERVER_BUILD_DIR/bin-profile-data	Directory with the PGO profile data. Wiped before the instrumented build.
PGO_TRAIN_TARGET	run-profile-suite	make target used to train the profile.

PGO (profile guided optimization)

With WITH_PGO=on the server is built in three passes:

1. instrumented build (-DFPROFILE_GENERATE=1),
2. training run (make run-profile-suite, i.e. mysql-test-run over the suites MySQL selected for profiling), which writes the profile to $FPROFILE_DIR,
3. final build (-DFPROFILE_USE=1, which additionally enables LTO) in the very same build directory - gcc matches the profile data by the object file paths, so the path must not change between passes.

ccache is not used for PGO builds, and the whole build takes roughly three times longer than a regular one. The extra logs are cmake-pgo-generate.log, make-pgo-generate.log and pgo-train.log in $SERVER_BUILD_DIR.

Benchmark Overrides

These override db-bench.sh defaults with values tuned for the build-and-bench workflow:

Variable	Default	db-bench.sh default	Description
ENGINE_CACHE	96G	32G	Size of the database engine cache.
WRITES_TIME_SECONDS	300	600	Duration in seconds for write workloads.
THREADS_LIST	8 16 32 64	1 4 16 64 128 256 512 1024	Thread counts to benchmark.
CNFFILE_NAME	cnf/stable-innodb.cnf	—	Config file name relative to the db-bench repo. Used to compute CONFIG_FILES when it is not set explicitly. See ./cnf/ for available presets.
REPEAT_NUM	1	—	Number of times to repeat the full benchmark run.
DBBENCH_SSL	(unset)	—	Set to on or 1 to enable SSL connections (sets SSL_CERTS_PATH to $DBBENCH_REPO_DIR/cert).

Usage

# Build Percona Server 8.0 and run the default benchmark
sudo -E nice --adjustment=-10 env SERVER_BRANCH=8.0 \
  ROOT_DIR=/mnt/fast/build-and-bench \
  ./build-and-bench.sh

# Build PostgreSQL and run with custom workloads
sudo -E nice --adjustment=-10 env ENGINE=postgres \
  SERVER_BRANCH=TDE_REL_17_STABLE \
  WORKLOAD_NAMES=reads,pg_writes \
  WRITES_TIME_SECONDS=120 \
  ./build-and-bench.sh

# Quick test with minimal data
sudo -E nice --adjustment=-10 env SERVER_BRANCH=8.0 \
  WRITES_TIME_SECONDS=30 THREADS_LIST="8" \
  WORKLOAD_NAMES=POINT_SELECT \
  ROOT_DIR=/mnt/optane/auto-perf-test \
  ./build-and-bench.sh

# Use bash -xe for command tracing (-x) and exit-on-error (-e)
sudo -E nice --adjustment=-10 env SERVER_BRANCH=8.0 \
  ROOT_DIR=/mnt/fast/build-and-bench \
  bash -xe ./build-and-bench.sh