I have a requirement for a system that is of the order of 8-10 times the size of my current system. Unfortunately (a) I don't know how many times larger it actually is, and (b) my current system, while very happy, even relaxed, on its current hardware, has not yet been subjected to the full rigour of the target number of users. So it is very difficult to estimate what hardware I need to specify for the new system.
Fortunately, the budget is fairly generous. Obviously, we don't want to gold-plate the system - but if a bit of overspend gives faster-than-specified performance, that will be a gain rather than wasted money. So I can get a lot of hardware - if I can confidently state that it will improve MySQL performance. So what should I be planning to use?
The database is quite small - 2-4 Gb, but high churn: maybe 25% of it replaced every day. Reads dominate writes, but not overwhelmingly: at a guess, 10:1. The current hardware is dual Xeon 2.0, 2Gb, single Scsi disk. The one fixed factor is that the OS is Windows 2000 (I know the arguments for Linux/BSD, but that is not feasible).
Scanning a PC manufacturer's website, it seems easy to get 4x2.5GHz Xeon, 1Mb L3, 8Gb ram, dual 15000 rpm Scsi with Raid 1 (for performance as well as reliability).
Does this sound balanced for a MySQL engine? Or what would other people advise?
My advice is that in the end, hardware does not matter that much. If it solves a problem, it solves it until your data outgrows it again, and eventually you hit your budget limitations and cannot afford an upgrade. Of course, there are certain common sense rules that need to be followed, eg. if you have a 20 GB database, you need at least a 20 GB disk, but otherwise, if your application is good, it runs well on modest hardware, and if not, doubling the data is likely to kill it no matter how powerful hardware you use on it. A good case in point was an earlier post from an 8-CPU Irix user.
I would suggest you focus on making the application good. It would be wise to invest a portion of the hardware budget into purchasing a MySQL support contract or consulting services.
Regarding Windows 2000 - I am curious why MySQL is an option, but Linux is not. They kind of go together, almost the same as MS-SQL and Windows, or Oracle and Solaris. Is this a dedicated MySQL machine? If yes, I cannot think of one technical reason to run Windows on it, and I've tried hard in the past. If you were using Oracle or especially MS-SQL, it would make sense. But if you've decided that MySQL is it for your database, I would really have a hard time coming up with any reasonalbe justification for Windows even if Microsoft or somebody else was going to pay me big money for it.
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