SSD for MySQL?

Did you try once to run your mysql-database on a SSD? Is it worth the investment?

My content database and link database is growing and growing, but if you have more then 1M entries and lack of memory for the key cache, it slows extremely down. Is SSD a solution?

I would think that it would be a big benefit but the space is then limited so then you have to create a small SSD raid

I am anyhow using a raid, but this is still too slow. I am thinking about buying either SAS, velociraptor or the aforementioned SSD. The problem is, that SSD in the consumer segment has not the best reputations in terms of read and write rate - I just don't know if the provided specs are somehow reliable or just ultra-exaggerated. Moreover, I heard, that the access time is very low - this is IMHO the interesting part in SSD - much more important than the maximum read/write transfer rate.

The problem with SSD is the painfully slow write rate and they still spend quite a while in starting the transfer of a new file, so when transfering lots of small files they aren't that much faster than a standard dive.

Your best bet would be a fast spinning small drive like the WD velociraptor set up in a decent raid, although if you are dealing with lots of small files say web pages it may be quicker to just have the as JBOD, because having all of the small bits of data spread out over multiple drives may just take longer.

Also are you sure its the hard drives that are slowing you down, maybe its the other hardware, cpu, ram etc..

fusionio dot com (I can't post urls until I hit 15 posts - sorry)

Basically a hard drive using NAND technology that goes into your pci4x slots on the Motherboard. No moving parts, no stupid cables, just direct access to the bus. You can use several on the same motherboard if you have slots open.
Woz from apple is on their mgmt team. Specifically addresses database issues.
160 gig
Write 670 MB/s (32K packet size)
Read 750 MB/s (32K packet size)
IOPS = 116,046 (4k read packet size)
IOPS = 93,199 (75/25 r/w mix 4k packet size)
50μs Read

Anyway just look at the website.

Looks great, but also very expensive, about 15$ per GB, omg. I thought about buying a SSD raid 0 with 2 devices and paying about 1K totally for say 200GB. Maybe it is wise to wait a little more?

guess you can buy it.

i have 2 SAS 15k drives as raid in my workstation - a friend of mine a single SSD... the data transfer from his SSD is almost as fast as my raid... but the access time of the ssd is muuuch higher.

the only thing i'm afraid of is that ssd is quite new technology and noone knows how long these drives will be working or if they get damaged after a amount of read/write actions...

but the speed is definitly incredible. if you have the money to spend go or it. i'll upgrade my system too this year with 2 ssd drives as a raid