You really need to experiment with the flush method on your equipment to see what works best for you. Environment:
innodb_flush_method = O_DIRECT
Our performance is 15% improved on the Dell 2950 server with SAS 15K RPM drives configured in RAID 1 configuration with the Dell PERC caching controller. We are running the Ubuntu 9.04 kernel, and most of the work is mysql using innodb. Your mileage may vary.
Mark maunder
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