Increasing the caching capability of MySQL - mysql

Question

My mysql only caters read requests. I thought, it will be a good idea to make use of the cache completely. I am running MySQL in a VM and that is the only application running inside the VM. I am allocating 2GB memory for that VM. I am using a 64 bit centos on the VM. If you think already it is using the maximum memory that can be used, I can also allocate more to that VM. I am not very good in understanding the mysql settings and finding out the memory footprint used by a process but I am interested in learning how to. Thanks a lot for the help.
These are some information regarding my MYSQL :
mysql> show global variables like "%cache%";
+------------------------------+----------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+------------------------------+----------------------+
| binlog_cache_size | 32768 |
| have_query_cache | YES |
| key_cache_age_threshold | 300 |
| key_cache_block_size | 1024 |
| key_cache_division_limit | 100 |
| max_binlog_cache_size | 18446744073709547520 |
| query_cache_limit | 1048576 |
| query_cache_min_res_unit | 4096 |
| query_cache_size | 0 |
| query_cache_type | ON |
| query_cache_wlock_invalidate | OFF |
| table_cache | 64 |
| thread_cache_size | 0 |
+------------------------------+----------------------+
13 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show global variables like "%buffer%";
+-------------------------------+---------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------------------+---------+
| bulk_insert_buffer_size | 8388608 |
| innodb_buffer_pool_awe_mem_mb | 0 |
| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 8388608 |
| innodb_log_buffer_size | 1048576 |
| join_buffer_size | 131072 |
| key_buffer_size | 8384512 |
| myisam_sort_buffer_size | 8388608 |
| net_buffer_length | 16384 |
| preload_buffer_size | 32768 |
| read_buffer_size | 131072 |
| read_rnd_buffer_size | 262144 |
| sort_buffer_size | 2097144 |
+-------------------------------+---------+
12 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show table status where name="items"
-> ;
+-------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| Name | Engine | Version | Row_format | Rows | Avg_row_length | Data_length | Max_data_length | Index_length | Data_free | Auto_increment | Create_time | Update_time | Check_time | Collation | Checksum | Create_options | Comment |
+-------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+---------+
| items | MyISAM | 10 | Dynamic | 42667 | 346 | 14775916 | 281474976710655 | 1970176 | 0 | 341337 | 2009-07-22 13:31:00 | 2010-10-20 15:37:18 | NULL | latin1_swedish_ci | NULL | | |
+-------+--------+---------+------------+-------+----------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------------+-------------------+----------+----------------+---------+
This is the output of my ulimit -a
[sethu#work13 root]$ ulimit -a
core file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority (-e) 0
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 8191
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 1024
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority (-r) 0
stack size (kbytes, -s) 10240
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 8191
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited
Please let me know if you need more information.

Answer 1

You can achieve a quick performance boost by enabling the query cache!
Add this to your my.cnf:
query_cache_type=1
query_cache_limit=1M
query_cache_size=32M

Answer 2

For basic statistics and recommendations you can start with mysqltuner.pl script. Do not apply recommendations blindly, as it might decrease performance.
MySQLTuner Github page
One-liner to fetch latest version of script and run it:
curl -sSL mysqltuner.pl | perl

Answer 3

Perhaps you could consider using memcached? However, going to InnoDB table should give an immediate improvement (as N.B. said in a comment)