Chrispcritters - 10:27 pm on Jun 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

I'm trying to ask this in a way that allows other people to learn from the responses rather than just answering the question for me.

When trying to determine hardware specs for use with a machine that will be a dedicated MySQL DB server what factors should be considered? And how do you determine minimum hardware requirements to assure a responsive machine without overpaying? (Why buy a $10k machine when a $1k would suffice.)

CPU(s), RAM, Storage (RAID vs SSD vs stand alone drive).

I'm sure the size of table(s) and interaction with table(s) are impacted by DB type as well.