# sizing innodb files

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98>\
**Category:** Other MySQL® Questions\
**Created:** [October 9, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98 "2006-10-09T10:58:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![acristia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@acristia](https://forums.percona.com/u/acristia)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98/1 "2006-10-09T10:58:26Z")

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I am looking for some tips to correctly size the innodb tablespace.

The whole database is about 10GB and I couldn’t really find which es better for MySQL/innodb tablespace (assuming one tablespace and not per table tablespace):  
- un big innodb file  
or  
- several smaller innodb files (eg . 5 files x 2GB)

We are using AIX 5.3 (which support large filesystems) an MySQL 5.0.24.

Thanks in advance.

Alejandro.-

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**Author:** ![Peter](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/peter/32/2_2.png) [@Peter](https://forums.percona.com/u/Peter)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2006, 11:20am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98/2 "2006-10-09T11:20:53Z")

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If you’re not planning placing files on different partitions and if your file system supports files over 2GB in size I would go with single large file, it is generally more efficient for flushing dirty data pages.

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**Author:** ![acristia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@acristia](https://forums.percona.com/u/acristia)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2006, 2:03pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98/3 "2006-10-09T14:03:48Z")

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We are not planning placing files on different partitions because we are using raid 0+1.

So we will follow your suggestion , using a single file for the tablespace.

thanks.

Alejandro.-

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**Author:** ![iyeat](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/iyeat/32/760_2.png) [@iyeat](https://forums.percona.com/u/iyeat)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2007, 5:58pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/sizing-innodb-files/98/4 "2007-07-17T17:58:05Z")

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What about in the case of extremely large data files? We are using MySQL with innodb attached to a RAID device configured with RAID 5. Our data is approximately 300GB but is only going to grow larger. Would you still suggest going with one large file? Or would you break the files out into smaller sizes?

We currently have 40 4GB files configured in our setup, but are really looking for a formula that is optimal for our servers.

Thanks!

Caio

EDIT:

Server specs: MySQL 5.0.37 Mac OS X Server 10.4.10 on an Xserve with 16GB RAM attached to a 3TB Xserve RAID via fibre.