I have a fairly busy server, with about 200 qps and a read/write ratio of about 10, running on MySQL 5.1.73 64bit on CentOs 6.6
Most aspects are optimized, however, whenever i restart mysql, it goes to about 80% of available connections. After 10-30 seconds it goes down to about 5-10% and stays there with no other unusual peaks.
While this is not a critical concern and it doesn't affect the server too often, I was wondering why this is happening and if the MySQL server can be optimized to better face the 10-20 seconds following a restart... This would at least help me have a more realistic figure of the highest usage of available connections, which is now set to whatever number of connection MySQL goes to in the first 10 seconds after restart.
--EDIT-- The issue is probably connected with what Tero said in his answer, however I am also looking for an improvement...