Split a database will improve performance?

Question

Hi to all I'm running a Wordpress MS installation and I would like to move a couple of heavy "sub" blogs on a different DB, will it encrease my performances? Actually I'm on a dedicated server with quadcore 2.5 Ghz, 6GB ram and a few nice stuff like Lightspeed eaccelerator and so on. I'm a "self made webmaster" so I need an easy to follow guide that can teach me how to split safely my DB and improve my performance. Thank you very much for this! (just read: Split WP install between 2 databases? is this the only solution available or there is an easier one?)

Answer 1

WPMUdev has a Multi-DB plugin but you won't see any performance gains from splitting your database up unless you have a very high volume of sites with thousands of tables.

From the plugin instructions:

Step 1: Decide how many databases you want (16, 256, 4096)

So, how do you know that this plugin is necessary for your install? Well, there are several factors to consider beyond the scope of this walkthrough, but as a basic guideline:

1-5,000 blogs/sites you should be fine with your WordPress default database

5,000 - 50,000 blogs/sites - go with 16 databases

50,000 - 100,000 blogs/sites - use 256 databases

100,000+ blogs/sites - use 4096 databases