Your second point (overnight performance hit) needs to be explained to managers often in projects that didn't spend the money in tools or proper performance testing.
Don't expect some gradual curve of loss of performance. Once a table exceeds the cache size an ok performing query can go very bad with no warning (say 100x longer). This might mean that you really need to do a production patch of some type. Plan for this before it happens.
Don't expect some gradual curve of loss of performance. Once a table exceeds the cache size an ok performing query can go very bad with no warning (say 100x longer). This might mean that you really need to do a production patch of some type. Plan for this before it happens.