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Generally the database server is the biggest, most expensive box we have to buy as scaling vertically is the only option. Are there any databases that scale well horizontally (i.e. across multiple commodity machines) and what are the limitations in this approach?
Don’t worry, good solutions are coming!
Couchdb and Hypertable are open source and still in alpha, but they are clearly designed to make scaling on commodity software simple. They work pretty well, and may change how you think about databases.
Also, if it’s okay to let someone else do the distributing for you, Google AppEngine and Amazon SimpleDB are extremely cheap distributed database services, though they’re both in beta right now so strict limitations are imposed.