Shinnok's questions

I would like to know all of the key points where MySQL can be fine tuned performance wise on a Linux server through my.cnf or through other methods, libraries and tools. Tips and tricks and shady stuff welcome too.

Since a target server architecture is important you can wrap your answers around this example target architecture:

1 GB of RAM (non ecc)

2.2GHz Dual Xeon

File System ext3 or reiserfs (welcome for suggestions)

7200 RPM HDD

A couple of Wordpress installations with at least 5-10 requests per second.

A pretty common setup, if you ask me, nothing special here.

Thus i'd like to get your input on how to tune a MySQL install on such a target server to the point where you can't really do much from a MySQL Server stand point to gain performance.

What happens if my EC2 instance gets ddosed/flooded, which could potentially go up to tens of gigabytes an hour(and even more) of undesired incoming traffic, will i be charged for this traffic?

My guess is yes, but what can i do in such nightmare scenarios? Can i complain or ask Amazon to help and not charge in such scenarios? Basically such a a ddos could run for weeks and amount for serious amounts of traffic, thus unwanted incurring charges. How can one guard himself from such scenarios?