This is a question I was asking myself after looking at some tweaks to a mysql server. I guess the more appropriate question that I wanted to ask was
Does setting the innodb_log_file_size parameter larger affect runtime performance?
A quick google led to the well known Mysql Performance Blog (highly recommended for understanding mysql internals and optimizations) which had this to say
If you’re doing significant amount of writes to Innodb tables decent size of innodb_log_file_size is important for MySQL Performance. However setting it too large will increase recovery time, so in case of MySQL crash or power failure…
…
First let me explain what happens on recovery and why large innodb_log_file_size slows down recovery…
So in general, no it doesn’t HURT performance but recovery time will take longer which is something to consider when trying to bring up a database that has crashed or trying to restore a database from a LVM snapshot that has not had the luxury of being able to have it cleanly shutdown.
