How to Build a Big-Data Cluster for memSQL 4.0 on the Cheap

So, now that memSQL has rolled out a community edition which is completely free to use, I thought I might show you an easy way to build a huge cluster for cheap that you can run memSQL on quite easily. I know it works because we have been running this in production for quite some time at GREPWords and SERPScape.

There isn’t really any magic to it, just finding the best hosting company for the job. What you want is a hosting company that offers a lot of exactly what you need – multi-core, high RAM servers – with no extra perks. I think I found the perfect host for this – CloudSouth. Yes, that is an affiliate link, judge for yourself if you think the prices are amazing. They keep their prices low by simply only offering a couple of types of machines and having no frills. What we are most interested in is their baseline High RAM product.

As of right now you can get their Dual Hex Core (read 12 cores) AMD Opteron with 32GB of RAM for $59.95/mo. Let’s say your budget is under $500/month for your product. Let’s see what that can get you…

8 Machines
12 Cores Each
32GB RAM Each
= 96 Cores and 256GB of RAM

Each server also comes with a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HD.

Now, let’s do a quick comparison of this at Amazon EC2 for the same specs. Let’s say we want just 1 30GB 8vCPU machine for a month on AmazonEC2. This is the m3.2xlarge spec, which will run you a nice $409/month. Yeah, that is right, holy crap, it costs almost as much for 1/8th of what we are getting at CloudSouth. For the same price difference, you could double your capacity for redundancy and then hire a part time sysadmin to monitor your cluster.