PSA with Mysql on 2nd HDD

[RooMeat]

I want to try and speed up access to my sites. Some are using quite large mysql databases.
I know the better solution would be to add a second server, but in the name of cost saving.. would a second hard drive running mysql be effective?
Is this possible to do with plesk??

 

[jamesyeeoc]

Unless the primary hard drive is really slow, then just adding a 2nd HDD for the database files will probably not increase performance much.

You should make sure the CPU/RAM resources are not the issue. If they are, then the 2nd HDD will not really do much.

 

[Cranky]

If you're hitting a bottleneck with I/O on the first disk then yes it will help, otherwise the bottleneck is probably elsewhere. You may even find a RAID disk system helps more ... RAID10 (4 disks minimum) offers redundancy (mirroring) and speed increase (striping) but isn't cheap and only helps if I/O is your issue.

We've got 1 of our servers (our only CPanel box ) with MySQL on a 2nd disk and it works well, but only because CPU/Memory aren't the bottleneck.

Plesk won't have any issue with accessing MySQL from a 2nd disk if it's mounted correctly as /var/lib/mysql