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Sad to see the recommendation to use MySQL - in my experience RDS hasn't been worth the effort - but I'm probably biased since I already invested the time in au

Sad to see the recommendation to use MySQL - in my experience RDS hasn't been worth the effort - but I'm probably biased since I already invested the time in automating PostgreSQL replication setup.

adrianh 13y ago
Believe me, I am sad to stop using Postgres. What parts of RDS haven't been worth the effort? I didn't have to make much effort, beyond rewriting my Postgres triggers into MySQL syntax.
- andrewgodwin 13y ago
  I've seen RDS have significant per-query overhead, and some very, very variable read times - in particular, some simple SELECTs randomly taking > 10s every so often.
  - falcolas 13y ago
    RDS is subject to the exact same intra-region latency issues that other AWS instances have. Perhaps worse in some cases, since their failover appears to be DRBD based.
  - the_economist 13y ago
    Is your ec2 instance in the exact same zone/region as your rds instance? An ec2 instance in us-east-1a will have extra latency dealing with an instance in any other zone, even us-east-1c.
    - RKearney 13y ago
      Stating us-east-1a means nothing, since your us-east-1a is someone else's us-east-1d. They're not the same across AWS accounts.
      - spicyj 13y ago
        Right, but 1a is never the same as 1c.
- chrislloyd 13y ago
  Did you consider using Heroku Postgres?
  - jmgrosen 13y ago
    I'm not the OP, but the thing that's always scared me off from those types of services is that I think there would be high latency, where in a DB you really need low latency. Is that not true?
    - pjungwir 13y ago
      Since Heroku runs on EC2, as long as OP kept his servers in the same availability zone as the DB, latency shouldn't be any worse than running it himself. But yes, in general I'd be wary of a database far away from my app servers.
      - falcolas 13y ago
        That can depend on whether you can hit the internal IPs, or just the external IPs. If you can only hit the external IPs, you're subject to greater network latency, plus data transfer fees.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  RDS is pretty expensive for what you get. You can't restore to a running instance from snapshots, you get very little control over the environment, and you can't replicate between geographic regions (only availability zones). I know you said you're a two man shop, but in this case it may make more sense to leverage other IaaS DB services instead of RDS.
  - riffraff 13y ago
    I am not sure what you mean by "You can't restore to a running instance from snapshots" cause, well, I've done it a few times. Could you expand a bit maybe?
    - rschmitty 13y ago
      I have also used their snapshots with success
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      My apologies. I should've said "to an existing instance." http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_RestoreFromSnapshot.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_R... "You must create a DB snapshot before you can restore a DB instance from one. When you restore the DB instance, you provide the name of the DB snapshot to restore from, and then provide a name for the new DB instance that is created from the restore. You cannot restore from a DB snapshot to an existing DB instance; a new DB instance is created when you restore."
  - gazarsgo 13y ago
    "you get very little control over the environment" also seems spurious. You get parameter groups to control just about everything you can from a standalone mysql instance. logs or things that load from disk (LOAD DATA ...) are the only things you can't touch, but a small price to pay for automated backups, failover and scaling (both up AND down...)
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Inconsistent performance, significantly slower than MySQL on a real box, and failure of the ridiculously expensive automatic failover were the reasons I dumped RDS. I ate a big loss after reserving instances, but seeing the server fall off the planet, and no spare ever take over for it despite paying for MultiAZ, what other response would have been reasonable?
- PixelPusher 13y ago
  We came across this issue as well, we'd been wasting too much time setting up Postgres. RDS seemed liked a good choice, except that MySQL is just that much worse than Postgres. We had just used things like concurrent indexes. We ended up going with Heroku's hosted Postgres solution. It costs the exact same we were spending w/ two High CPU instances w/ provisioned IOPS volumes. Now we get fully managed, same price, and all the features of Postgres. We still host our full application on AWS, the only thing is that we have a managed database. While Postgres makes it easy to setup replication and what not, AWS hardware just sucks. It takes time to properly tune it.
  - dmishe 13y ago
    What tier of postgres do you use? How's performance?
pjungwir 13y ago
A month or so ago I thought about starting a hosted Postgres service on top of EC2, since lots of people seem to want "RDS for Postgres." I think if you specialized you could beat Heroku's offering, but ultimately I decided there was too much risk of Amazon simply adding Postgres themselves. But if anyone is more daring than me, perhaps there is an opportunity here.
- AlisdairO 13y ago
  I believe EnterpriseDB already offer something like this: http://www.enterprisedb.com/ http://www.enterprisedb.com/
- mh- 13y ago
  I saw this in the AWS marketplace (aws.amazon.com/marketplace) - http://www.enterprisedb.com/cloud-database/amazon http://www.enterprisedb.com/cloud-database/amazon no experience or affiliation, though.
  - pjungwir 13y ago
    I saw that, but I could do better. :-) Heroku's Postgres-only option is the product to beat. It makes it really easy and has some great replication features. But a dedicated company could offer more.
    - mh- 13y ago
      I hadn't seen it prior reading/replying to your comment, but I thought it looked comparable to RDS as I skimmed http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/products-overview/postgres-plus-cloud-database http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/produ... I've not used Heroku's Postgres stuff, so no idea what it offers beyond that
theg2 13y ago
I wouldn't say there is much effort required at all with RDS. We use it without issue and while there are some annoying issues with limited access to the environment, it's been pretty solid for us.
borlak 13y ago
In my experience RDS has been amazing, and I am a MySQL guy. I say it like that because as a MySQL guy I would much prefer to setup my own server and use a third party engine like Percona or Maria, but RDS(MySQL) performance has been incredible. The only thing I would complain about is the lack of a proxy or load balancer in front of their Multi-AZ setup. With any failover you are forced to have a downtime of 3-5 minutes while DNS propagates.

Sad to see the recommendation to use MySQL - in my experience RDS hasn't been worth the effort - but I'm probably biased since I already invested the time in automating PostgreSQL replication setup.

adrianh 13y ago

Believe me, I am sad to stop using Postgres. What parts of RDS haven't been worth the effort? I didn't have to make much effort, beyond rewriting my Postgres triggers into MySQL syntax.

andrewgodwin 13y ago
I've seen RDS have significant per-query overhead, and some very, very variable read times - in particular, some simple SELECTs randomly taking > 10s every so often.
- falcolas 13y ago
  RDS is subject to the exact same intra-region latency issues that other AWS instances have. Perhaps worse in some cases, since their failover appears to be DRBD based.
- the_economist 13y ago
  Is your ec2 instance in the exact same zone/region as your rds instance? An ec2 instance in us-east-1a will have extra latency dealing with an instance in any other zone, even us-east-1c.
  - RKearney 13y ago
    Stating us-east-1a means nothing, since your us-east-1a is someone else's us-east-1d. They're not the same across AWS accounts.
    - spicyj 13y ago
      Right, but 1a is never the same as 1c.
chrislloyd 13y ago
Did you consider using Heroku Postgres?
- jmgrosen 13y ago
  I'm not the OP, but the thing that's always scared me off from those types of services is that I think there would be high latency, where in a DB you really need low latency. Is that not true?
  - pjungwir 13y ago
    Since Heroku runs on EC2, as long as OP kept his servers in the same availability zone as the DB, latency shouldn't be any worse than running it himself. But yes, in general I'd be wary of a database far away from my app servers.
    - falcolas 13y ago
      That can depend on whether you can hit the internal IPs, or just the external IPs. If you can only hit the external IPs, you're subject to greater network latency, plus data transfer fees.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
RDS is pretty expensive for what you get. You can't restore to a running instance from snapshots, you get very little control over the environment, and you can't replicate between geographic regions (only availability zones). I know you said you're a two man shop, but in this case it may make more sense to leverage other IaaS DB services instead of RDS.
- riffraff 13y ago
  I am not sure what you mean by "You can't restore to a running instance from snapshots" cause, well, I've done it a few times. Could you expand a bit maybe?
  - rschmitty 13y ago
    I have also used their snapshots with success
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    My apologies. I should've said "to an existing instance." http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_RestoreFromSnapshot.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_R... "You must create a DB snapshot before you can restore a DB instance from one. When you restore the DB instance, you provide the name of the DB snapshot to restore from, and then provide a name for the new DB instance that is created from the restore. You cannot restore from a DB snapshot to an existing DB instance; a new DB instance is created when you restore."
- gazarsgo 13y ago
  "you get very little control over the environment" also seems spurious. You get parameter groups to control just about everything you can from a standalone mysql instance. logs or things that load from disk (LOAD DATA ...) are the only things you can't touch, but a small price to pay for automated backups, failover and scaling (both up AND down...)
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
dangrossman 13y ago
Inconsistent performance, significantly slower than MySQL on a real box, and failure of the ridiculously expensive automatic failover were the reasons I dumped RDS. I ate a big loss after reserving instances, but seeing the server fall off the planet, and no spare ever take over for it despite paying for MultiAZ, what other response would have been reasonable?
PixelPusher 13y ago
We came across this issue as well, we'd been wasting too much time setting up Postgres. RDS seemed liked a good choice, except that MySQL is just that much worse than Postgres. We had just used things like concurrent indexes. We ended up going with Heroku's hosted Postgres solution. It costs the exact same we were spending w/ two High CPU instances w/ provisioned IOPS volumes. Now we get fully managed, same price, and all the features of Postgres. We still host our full application on AWS, the only thing is that we have a managed database. While Postgres makes it easy to setup replication and what not, AWS hardware just sucks. It takes time to properly tune it.
- dmishe 13y ago
  What tier of postgres do you use? How's performance?

pjungwir 13y ago

A month or so ago I thought about starting a hosted Postgres service on top of EC2, since lots of people seem to want "RDS for Postgres." I think if you specialized you could beat Heroku's offering, but ultimately I decided there was too much risk of Amazon simply adding Postgres themselves. But if anyone is more daring than me, perhaps there is an opportunity here.

AlisdairO 13y ago
I believe EnterpriseDB already offer something like this: http://www.enterprisedb.com/ http://www.enterprisedb.com/
mh- 13y ago
I saw this in the AWS marketplace (aws.amazon.com/marketplace) - http://www.enterprisedb.com/cloud-database/amazon http://www.enterprisedb.com/cloud-database/amazon no experience or affiliation, though.
- pjungwir 13y ago
  I saw that, but I could do better. :-) Heroku's Postgres-only option is the product to beat. It makes it really easy and has some great replication features. But a dedicated company could offer more.
  - mh- 13y ago
    I hadn't seen it prior reading/replying to your comment, but I thought it looked comparable to RDS as I skimmed http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/products-overview/postgres-plus-cloud-database http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services-training/produ... I've not used Heroku's Postgres stuff, so no idea what it offers beyond that

theg2 13y ago

I wouldn't say there is much effort required at all with RDS. We use it without issue and while there are some annoying issues with limited access to the environment, it's been pretty solid for us.

borlak 13y ago

In my experience RDS has been amazing, and I am a MySQL guy. I say it like that because as a MySQL guy I would much prefer to setup my own server and use a third party engine like Percona or Maria, but RDS(MySQL) performance has been incredible. The only thing I would complain about is the lack of a proxy or load balancer in front of their Multi-AZ setup. With any failover you are forced to have a downtime of 3-5 minutes while DNS propagates.