Originally Posted by QTbucks_Mark

Not going to spam you with a product, but if your boards are MySQL intensive, try to go for a Opteron system running a 64-bit Linux kernel. Switching to MySQL 4.x or even 5 will also help A LOT if you're still using 3.x

If your databases are not really big, try to have at least as much RAM as your active DBs are sized. Having the server keep everything in memory reduces the disk-I/O to nearly zero.

I run several "big" MySQL server using this configuration for ISPs which do several thousand queries/sec average, 24x7. No "too many connections" or other problems at all.

You may want to try a clustered approach, if your boards are really big. If you don't want to run a system like this by yourself, just PM me and I'll get you in contact with a provider I work with who offers systems like this for virtual hosting. I have a couple of clients doing hundreds of gigs each month this way. Never had any problems...

regards,
Markus