I would second what another poster stated, to look at DB/RAM optimizations. If possible, you should have enough RAM in the system to hold your entire DB in memory - and your db software should be setup to take advantage of that memory. Since you stated that your system is only having trouble at writes, doing batch inserts, I would look at how you are doing these batch inserts and see if you can optimize this by using techniques to delay key writes or adjust locking mechanisms on the insert. Some databases have special insert from file or bulk insert operations that are much faster than running many single row inserts - be sure you are taking advantage of these methods. --Blake