http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/shardb/
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/hyperdb/
Havent run into the issue yet, but keeping my eye on the database. Those two plugins above will allow you to split WP table onto multiple databases.
I am not sure what is “large” in terms of databases. We have about 2400 tables and almost 3GB of data. Still “small” but getting to the point that I am considering our future options.
Thanks for the information, jkhongusc. I was in the middle of researching HyperDB and SharDB when I received your response. Great minds must think alike. 🙂
I’ll look into HyperDB and SharDB as a possible solution to our problem. I will need to find out if our shared hosting provider will allow us to shard our database, and if there are any costs associated with database sharding. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is. 🙁
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has experience using HyperDB or SharDB. Thanks in advance.
3G is large.
You may also want to look into changing some of the defaults in WP, like only saving 5 or 10 revisions, instead of all, and doing a force purge on the DB for all revisions, plus spam comments. Some users are bad at remembering to do the spam thing.
Every new site creation will create a number of tables in the database.
From the number 5700 it sounds as if you have almost 600 sites, is this correct?
If so, this is normal. If not, you may have a plugin installed which is adding extra tables to each install (if you have them set as Must Use for example).
The only real solution here is a new hosting provider that allows 1000s of data tables 🙂