[mitchty]

Option A is the best imo, I worked on many sql db's that the rule was to fit it into ram. Option c will bite you in the ass eventually. The kernel and your other processes need some space to malloc, and you dont want to page in/out.

Having 4/16TiB servers or "memory db servers" as I thought of them solved a lot of problems outright. Still need huge i/o but less of it depending on your workload.

[Dylan16807]

I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a list of steps, not a list of options.

> The kernel and your other processes need some space to malloc, and you dont want to page in/out.

Some space, like "most of 20-50 gigabytes"?

You want to take into account how exactly the space used by joins will fit into memory, but 2-5% of a terabyte is an extremely generous allocation for everything else on the box.