If anyone has had some experience with upgrading as your operations grow, I'd appreciate if you could answer ANY of the following questions:
Did you say M$.. yuck.. if you think you need something else then MySQL you could take a look at PostgreSQL.. It's good, it's free and it doesn't have M$ written all over it :-)
The subject sounds like commercial databases are better then OpenSource..
I don't think that's treu. You could find great solutions in OpenSource.. Like MySQL.. PostgreSQL and others.. I even know quite a few people on several lists who kicked off commercial products and started using opensource.. for various reasons.
If you look at the specs.. you will see MySQL performs very good.. also with large databases.
Having your own dedicated server will help you to get better performing websites..
Memory.. the more.. the better.. you can have to little but never to much of it..
If you're currently experiencing performance problems I would assume a dedicated server might help..
Bye,
B.
P.S. the subject is great flamebait..