Large databases / performance
 

I have placed all my tables for a website into one database - including vBulletin and all my custom stuff. I was checking the other day and my database is now up to 8.5gb. I have 162 tables, but some are "backups" of other tables, some of those backups are themselves very large (couple million records each).

So, my question is does overall size of a database impact performance or is it strictly individual tables? Does having backups of tables in the same database adversely affect performance in any way and should those be moved to a backup database of their own?

Just curious - if you know of good reference material, am trying to understand how database size can impact MySQL performance as our site continues to grow.

It wont affect MySQL performance. What operating system are you using. The only adverse affect to having redundant data on your disk is the possibily of fragmentation. There are certain file systems that do not suffer from this though.

RedHat ES3. I have since learned that tables are stored as inidividual files, the number of tables does not appear to be a factor; although the size of a specific table itself can be an issue.