I have a database that was running on a propitiatory system with a hosting company. The data is about 10 years old and mostly text. The database it too large aprox 300GB. We are trying to migrate the database to Drupal and I am wondering if this is a good idea and whether drupal/mysql could support such large databases or not. I have a few thoughts such as archiving the data and using caching tools such as varnish. Is this a good idea? Can drupal support/serve it? What impact could this have on performance?
Edit: We have already migrated the database but performance is a extremely bad. ~17 million nodes, and ~90 million comments. What could I optimize? what kind of infrastructure would you recommend? caching and architecture? Load balancing? Any hints or tips that could help run such big site with drupal is what I need. Case studies if anyone is aware of.