For years, companies that run high-performance data-intensive web applications (like ours), have focused on putting everything possible in RAM… heavy DB caching, IMAP indexes, Search indexes, etc.  And we have been eagerly awaiting the day when we can affordably put this data on solid state disks.  We’re close now… real close.  You can even get an SSD for your MacBook Air.

I’ve been following Kevin Burton’s dive into MySQL performance on solid state disks.  Here is his final summary.  I recommend reading his entire series of posts on the topic.

There’s a bit of quirkiness when running a database on SSDs, but the results are very promising.  I can’t wait to put some of these in our servers.

Kevin’s tests were all with MySQL InnoDB and MyISAM tables, but he briefly touched on a few buzz words in his closing remarks:

> Also, if you’re using something like Bigtable via Hypertable or Hbase
your performance should be
> stellar since these are append only
databases and SSDs do very well with sequential reads and writes.