Research System

[Peter Crosbie]

Please forgive the naive question but we are researchers not db experts. We use MySQL for our research finance db. The db are medium sized with several small characteristic tables supporting large price/date tables. These price/date tables can have many millions of rows.

Only one or two people are connected to the db at any one time and the typical queries are large select or update queries. We turn off all the proper db logging to make the tables as fast as possible. We can rebuild the db at any time so failure is not of particular concern.

We are looking at buying new machines to host MySQL. I have been tasked with figuring what to buy and would appreciate any advice.

We are a Windows 2000 and XP shop although Linux wouldn't be out of the question if the performance gains where really significant. Have spec the following machine; dual processor, 4 GB memory, large ATA disks. Does MySQL use both processors if present? Or should we simply buy the fastest single processor we can?

Any thoughts on machine configuration gratefully accepted.