Outsource mysql hosting? I need access to more storage.

[ntbgl]

I have a small website, with very little traffic now, but I hope this will change in the future.

This site is data archive system which stores it's information in a mysql table, storing several hundred rows each day, independent of site traffic.

My problem is, my tables have grown too large for the limits imposed by my hosting account.

It's not that it's a dirt cheap account, it's a very nice account, but mysql table limits too restrictive for this site's needs. That being said, I would like to stay with this host.

Is it possible to use one account for hosting, use some kind of service to host my mysql table?

Or, if I do need to change to a new hosting account, who are some providers with better mysql support, hopefully in the $20 range, or am I being unrealistic?

[physics]

Hi ntbgl. How many GB are we talking about here?

[ntbgl]

Not even 1gb, it's just a lot of rows. Each row only has a title, sentance, and small amount of other data, but if I have about 400 entries per day, that's 146,000 rows added per year.

[mack]

I think the key here is to think long term. You mentioned that right now your site is still fairly low traffic. Thing how large you expect your database to grow and make arangements to facilitate that now. With low traffic it is a lot easier to change db/web hosting.

Once you start to get high traffic a site move can be a lot more complicated.

Mack.

[phranque]

thousand of rows is a small database.

connecting to a remote mysql server will require tcp/ip and authorization support from the db server host:
MySQL :: MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual :: 4.2.2 Connecting to the MySQL Server [dev.mysql.com]

[ntbgl]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Turns out it was my mistake. It was something else that was causing problems with my database, and I thought it was because of size. It turns out that I had a inadvertent loop in a query statment, and it was causing problems, so they disabled the tabel till I fixed it.

However, when going over their MySQL policy, it turned out they have a limit of 1500 querys per hour. Is this fairly restrictive, or is it typical?

[icydee]

Yes that's restrictive, 1500 requests an hour would restrict you to an average of about one request every 2.5 seconds.

When you consider that a single page request in a web application would typically make several database queries then you have a severely throttled web site.

Of course the 1500 requests an hour might be averaged over a 24 hour period but even so if you go 'global' you would expect to get requests 24hrs a day.

Get yourself a much better hosting company. If you are only paying a few dollars a month then that's the level of performance you can expect.

I checked with ixwebhosting.com, a company I use (although not really very heavily) and they have no specific limit on their 'unlimited pro' account which costs $12.99 per month although I expect they would complain if you had some very heavy and un-optimised queries which loaded their server.

In any case you would want to use the mysql 'explain' to help you to optimise your database. I have seen many systems that worked ok for the first few months and then ground to a halt because they had not done something as simple as index appropriate columns.

[icydee]

One other point, you say it is a 'data archive site'. Do you mean you are uploading files?

If so then don't store the files in the database, store them on the filesystem with pointers to the files in the database tables.

In this way your database will be easier to maintain and optimise and not be bloated with BLOB data.