How to optimize a table containing 1 billion rows, fixed row format using myisam engine in mysql?

I am having a table containing 1 billion rows, fixed row format and using myisam engine in mysql. I am thinking of shardding the table but that development takes time开发者_高级运维. Are there any temporary solutions for improving the performance?

you can take a look at mysql partitioning. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/partitioning-overview.html
it allows you to distribute portions of individual tables across a file system transparent to your queries

As per your comment if "insert/select ratio = 100:1" is the case, then i don see any reason to have indexes (apart from primary key index if any) on the table. It will further slow down your inserts.

Also, if you can queue inserts to this table then you can try creating a in-memory table (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/memory-storage-engine.html) and direct all the inserts to the table which will be faster and then do a bulk insert/periodic flush in to ur myisam engine based table.

Also you can partition the table on a specific column out of those 4 you have(if there is any good candidate) or go for hash based partition (if you don find any). I am not sure why you are saying sharding is going to take dev time. you can partition an existing non partitioned table too. http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?106,264106,264110