It doesn't seem like a mission critical app, but I would seriously consider using redundant RAID (ie, not 0, but 1 or 5). Nothing ruins your day quite like losing a non-redundant drive, even if you have good backups.
Also, what sort of workload are you looking at? How responsive does it need to be? Is your data well indexed? What table types are you using? What is the total size of the data? Spindles do play a factor, but for 6GB of data you're not looking at orders of magnitudes of performance. Smart indexing will make the biggest difference, then RAM. It all really depends -- if you queries are run once or twice a day to generate reports, it is probably okay for them to take 5 or 10 minutes. If you run the questions repeatedly and need under 10 seconds for a response you'll have different requirements. You should take a look at Supermicro chassis (http://www.supermicro.com). They have various 1U systems that take 4 drives. I'm sure there is a UK distributor. Thanks. On 12/12/05, James Harvard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [Apologies for my first post here being semi-off-topic!] > > I normally deploys apps I develop (MySQL with Lasso web middleware) with an > ISP, so I have no experience of choosing hardware configurations or sourcing > them. > > My current client's application involves a very large amount of data which I > have split into a number of tables. These tables (data files) are currently > between several hundred MB and 2 GB each for 6 1/2 years data, and will grow. > However, tables are not updated in normal use (we can take the app off-line > for updates) - so the data is pretty much read-only. > > From my reading of the manual it seems that disc seek speed is the limiting > factor once tables get so large that the data and indices cannot be cached in > RAM. So I believe that the best hardware setup for a dedicated MySQL server > would include two fast discs striped (RAID 0) for the databases and a third > separate disc for the operating system. > > Does this sound right? (Also thoughts on SCSI versus SATA?) > > Second question: > > The chap who will probably administer the servers seems to prefer buying > Dell, but AFAIK Dell don't do any 1U servers that would support 3 drives. Can > anyone recommend any server brands available in the UK, or UK based companies > that will build servers, supporting 3 discs (2 RAID & 1 for the OS)? > > Many thanks, > James Harvard > > -- > MySQL General Mailing List > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
