...even surpassing it's theorically maximum possible allocation.
[OK] Maximum possible memory usage: 7.3G (46% of installed RAM)
There is not actually a way to calculate maximum possible memory usage for MySQL, because there is no cap on the memory it can request from the system.
The calculation done by mysqltuner.pl is only an estimate, based on a formula that doesn't take into account all possible variables, because if all possible variables were taken into account, the answer would always be "infinite." It's unfortunate that it's labeled this way.
Here is my theory on what's contributing to your excessive memory usage:
thread_cache_size = 128
Given that your max_connections is set to 200, the value of 128 for thread_cache_size seems far too high. Here's what makes me think this might be contributing to your problem:
When a thread is no longer needed, the memory allocated to it is released and returned to the system unless the thread goes back into the thread cache. In that case, the memory remains allocated.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/memory-use.html
If your workload causes even an occasional client thread to require a large amount of memory, those threads may be holding onto that memory, then going back to the pool and sitting around, continuing to hold on to memory they don't technically "need" any more, on the premise that holding on to the memory is less costly than releasing it if you're likely to need it again.
I think it's worth a try to do the following, after first making a note of how much memory MySQL is using at the moment.
Note how many threads are currently cached:
mysql> show status like 'Threads_cached';
+----------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------+-------+
| Threads_cached | 9 |
+----------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Next, disable the thread cache.
mysql> SET GLOBAL thread_cache_size = 0;
This disables the thread cache, but the cached threads will stay in the pool until they're used one more time. Disconnect from the server, then reconnect and repeat.
mysql> show status like 'Threads_cached';
Continue disconnecting, reconnecting, and checking until the counter reaches 0.
Then, see how much memory MySQL is holding.
You may see a decrease, possibly significant, and then again you may not. I tested this on one of my systems, which had 9 threads in the cache. Once those threads had all been cleared out of the cache, the total memory held by MySQL did decrease... not by much, but it does illustrate that threads in the cache do release at least some memory when they are destroyed.
If you see a significant decrease, you may have found your problem. If you don't, then there's one more thing that needs to happen, and how quickly it can happen depends on your environment.
If the theory holds that the other threads -- the ones currently servicing active client connections -- have significant memory allocated to them, either because of recent work in their current client session or because of work requiring a lot of memory that was done by another connection prior to them languishing in the pool, then you won't see all of the potential reduction in memory consumption until those threads are allowed to die and be destroyed. Presumably your application doesn't hold them forever, but how long it will take to know for sure whether there's a difference will depend on whether you have the option of cycling your application (dropping and reconnecting the client threads) or if you'll have to just wait for them to be dropped and reconnected over time on their own.
But... it seems like a worthwhile test. You should not see a substantial performance penalty by setting thread_cache_size to 0. Fortunately, thread_cache_size is a dynamic variable, so you can freely change it with the server running.
Thank for posting the my.ini
PROBLEM: You have the basedir and datadir under the [client] section
basedir and datadir are server-only options, not client program options.
SOLUTION : Remove them from under the [client] section and you are good to go !!!
When done, this
[client]
port= new_port
##The MySQL server
Path to installation directory. All paths are usually resolved relative to this.
basedir="C:/MySQL/"
#Path to the database root
datadir="C:/MySQL/"
#Set the default character set.
default-character-set=latin1
should now be this:
[client]
port= new_port
Give it a Try !!!
Best Answer
If you are still seeing on-disk temporary tables with your max_heap_table_size and tmp_table_size set that high, then chances are you have a handful of queries with GROUP BY/ORDER BY (or a complex join) that are not using indexes effectively and are generating an enormous amount of intermediate data or you have TEXT/BLOB columns somewhere. Since you said you don't have the latter, I'm guessing it's the former.
You have a few options
Keep in mind that MySQL pushes large temporary tables to disk for good reason. Eventually, you risk pushing other data out of memory (or worse, running the server out of memory) in order to process a handful of queries with very large data sets. Those settings are per table, so if you have any level of concurrency, you could get into trouble very quickly. I run in production with tmp_table_size/max_heap_table_size at 768MB, but I have 140GB of RAM to work with. Your headroom is much smaller with only 12GB.