I am running MySQL 5.0.51a on Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition on an HP DL580 G4 with 3GB installed. One of my database tables has grown to 5.3 GB with an index file of 2.5 GB, which I believe is causing MySQL to be slow due to having to constantly load and unload the index file when updates are made to the table. The server itself seems to be performing OK because MySQL is only using about 500MB of memory (there are other apps running on the system, but MySQL uses the most memory).

The table is fairly active with new records getting adding all during day but no deletes, ever. The MySQL server has up to 600 connections allowed, but only small number (10 or 20) would actually be writing to this table. I increased the memory limits in MySQL but since the max connections is so high I don't think I can give each connection 1GB without risking a problem. Is there some tuning that would let just certain connections get a lot of memory?

So I have started to look for alternatives to avert the crisis I know is coming soon. Some of the options I have:

1. Upgrade to Server 2003 Enterprise to install 64GB of memory. Question: would 32 bit MySQL be able to access more than 2GB? Would that be 2GB per thread? That would still be smaller than the index table size so it might not solve the problem completely, but it would be better than now.

2. Upgrade to Server 200x 64 bit and MySQL 64 bit.

3. Switch to a *nix 64 bit server.

If anybody has suggestions for things to do in the meantime, opinions on which way to go, or other things that I have overlooked I would appreciate the help.

Thanks