Does mysql support vertical partitioning?

Does Facebook use Mysql partitioning features?

• Would be great if you could tell a bit about the use cases and how partitioning helped.

• Answer:

  We do use some partitioning features on various databases.  We currently don't use it on our largest tier however. The primary use case is for dealing with a moving window of retained data.  We  use range partitioning based on time and create partitions for future dates.  Once data gets too old, it will then be dropped.  The exact size of the partition will depend upon the desired retention period.  We normally try to limit tables to 100 partitions at the maximum due to inefficiencies in MySQL's partitions. The advantage of this is that you can remove a lot data with a minimal amount of effort and locking.  In addition, it allows you to keep your data relatively defragmented since the removed data isn't interspersed throughout your table.