17 ms·

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

593 points by teoruiz 13y ago

jeffdavis 13y ago
Does anyone know if it's pure community PostgreSQL or if there are modifications? If there are modifications, is it 100% compatible?
adrianh 13y ago
This is HUGE! I'm using the AWS stack for http://www.soundslice.com/ http://www.soundslice.com/ and I've been using MySQL instead of Postgres, purely because my hatred for MySQL is less than my hatred for being a sysadmin. It was a tradeoff, and I miss Postgres dearly every time I use MySQL. This new Amazon offering solves that. I wrote a little more about my AWS setup here: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/
- pc86 13y ago
  Let me just say that I absolutely love soundslice. It's a great application!
  - saltyknuckles 13y ago
    Its actually really really impressive
  - adrianh 13y ago
    Thanks! And it'll be even better once I migrate to Postgres. :-)
    - rabidonrails 13y ago
      Wow, Soundslice looks amazing! Excited to play around with it.
- saltyknuckles 13y ago
  Hell fuck yeah this is huge!
- mmcclellan 13y ago
  Came here to say "This is huge!", found Django creator beat me to it.
- sync 13y ago
  Hey, just took a look at soundslice, looks super nice. FYI, it doesn't look your payment modal works on smaller browser windows: https://www.monosnap.com/image/UvJbxMQEwkzqLH5btNJ7a9G6Q https://www.monosnap.com/image/UvJbxMQEwkzqLH5btNJ7a9G6Q ... no visible pay button, and the modal itself scrolls when you scroll the page.
  - adrianh 13y ago
    Thanks very much -- I've just done a band-aid solution and moved the payment modal up, but we'll get a better solution up soon. Much appreciated!
    - pallandt 13y ago
      Chiming in with some more appreciation! Great stuff!
- fat0wl 13y ago
  Yea I was using MySQL on RDS just to escape the Heroku monolith. Funny that Heroku announced a new Postgres pricing model that is VERY expensive compared to old setup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6712570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6712570) just in time to be wiped off the map by RDS.
  - fat0wl 13y ago
    hey who downvoted this without replying?! Last time I badmouthed Heroku on here I got a reply from one of their employees asking me to fill out support tickets for errors I was getting in their apps...... O_o they're watching.
    - avenger123 13y ago
      No one's watching. Your initial comment just really didn't add any value. Calling Heroku monolith compared to Amazon is an understatement and I don't see Heroku being "wiped off the map" from this.
      - ceejayoz 13y ago
        https://twitter.com/scottvdp/status/401111184092315648 https://twitter.com/scottvdp/status/401111184092315648 > RDS 4XL vs Heroku Mecha: 40% cheaper on demand, 74% cheaper 1 year reserved, 82% cheaper 3 year reserved... with more features and capacity. If that's true, Heroku's Postgres offering isn't going to do well. "Wiped off the map" may be an overstatement, but not by that much.
        fat0wl 13y ago
        If you listen closely you can hear the sound of an army of devteams uploading DB exports to Amazon.... & it would be louder if the rest could figure out where to put the custom DB URL parameter ;D
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - 13y ago
- coolrhymes 13y ago
  Good to see another Django creator. We are a proud django startup @kipinhall I couldn't believe my eyes when I read RDS Postgres offerings.
MrGando 13y ago
I think that the 'simple monthly calculator' hasn't yet included PostgreSQL instances?
- runako 13y ago
  MySQL (free) and Oracle BYOL (no additional license cost) are the same cost at RDS. Since PG is free, I'd guess the cost will be the same as MySQL.
  - MrGando 13y ago
    That's what I think too, they should state MySQL/PostgreSQL or something like that in the calculator though.
    - amock 13y ago
      PostgreSQL costs more than MySQL according to http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ .
      - eonil 13y ago
        Price difference seems huge. Looks more than Oracle? Can anyone explain why?
        runako 13y ago
        Either they updated the table since you posted, or you're misreading it. MySQL Large is $0.32/hr, PG Large is $0.336/hr, Oracle is $0.565/hr. I don't know why the MySQL/PG prices are different.
        eonil 13y ago
        My fault. I misread it. PostgreSQL has only heavy-utilization unit on reserved instance. I thought it's light utilization unit. Heavy/Large/1yr(reserved, multiAZ)/Tokyo: PostgreSQL = $1548, Oracle = $2440 Seems reasonable price. And I don't care MySQL price because it's not an option to me.
sjtgraham 13y ago
FINALLY!
frankwiles 13y ago
Been waiting for this for a long time, can finally nudge our clients that want to use RDS (for various reasons) to use a sane DB. Thanks Amazon!
thinkalone 13y ago
Here's the announcement on the AWS blog - http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-rds-for-postgresql-now-available.html http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-rds-for-postgresql...
yumraj 13y ago
I've heard about PostgreSQL and know that HN community raves about it, but am currently using RDS with MySQL. Does it make sense to migrate to PostgreSQL, I don't have a lot of data as I'm in the early stage? What are the primary advantages that PostgreSQL provides over MySQL? Any advise/pointers is appreciated.
- the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
  > Does it make sense to migrate to PostgreSQL, I don't have a lot of data as I'm in the early stage? What are the primary advantages that PostgreSQL provides over MySQL? Any advise/pointers is appreciated. If MySQL works for you, there is no reason to change. Some people have quite a dependency on Postgres (hstore, JSON, transactional DDL, pubsub, PLPGSQL etc.)
  - jeffdavis 13y ago
    Ordinarily I would agree, but in this case, the poster said that there's not a lot of data yet so it would be easier to migrate. Choosing a database is a pretty major decision with long-term impact that might not be obvious now, so it's worth exploring a few options if you have that luxury. I think there are two times when it makes sense to consider a DB migration: (1) early on, when it's easy; (2) if you are in major trouble with your existing DB.
  - gtaylor 13y ago
    > Some people have quite a dependency on Postgres Our dependency on Postgres is more to do with it being a lot safer with our data. It doesn't silently fail, the transactions have a better failure mode, and as previously pointed out it handles ALTER in production a LOT better than MySQL. The combination of safety, speed/efficiency in schema/index alteration, and its increasingly good performance are why we depend on it. The rest is just gravy.
- adrianh 13y ago
  Postgres actually cares about your data. Perhaps you mistakenly insert "2013-10-32" into a date column. MySQL will silently convert this to "0000-00-00" (!!). Postgres will raise an error. Perhaps you make an error in a transaction. MySQL lets you keep doing subsequent things in the transaction. Postgres treats the transaction as invalid and forces you to start over. Perhaps you want to add a column to a table that has millions of rows. With MySQL, you'll be waiting a looooong time (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463677/alter-table-without-locking-the-table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463677/alter-table-withou...). With Postgres, it takes about a second. Of course, there are things you can do to make MySQL less horrible, and this is a generalization. But Postgres is just more respectful and more solid. Oh, and PostGIS (Postgres' geo add-on) is by far the best open-source geospatial database. If you're doing anything with geographic queries, you need to be using it. MySQL's stuff is laughable in comparison. Context: I've dealt extensively with both databases, both from the perspective of a framework author (Django) and a developer making products. I've used both databases on and off since 2001.
vocino 13y ago
This will make the ease of Elastic Beanstalk much more appealing.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
Will anyone please explain the tactical reasons why PostgreSQL won? It's pretty obvious it has. I've basically ignored the database wars for a few years, so it's kind of interesting to see that everyone's using PostgreSQL now.
- kvinnako 13y ago
  One of many reasons is MySql being bought by Oracle and name change/lost of community backing etc...along with some missing advanced technical features....
- craigkerstiens 13y ago
  I've written a couple of blog posts about what makes Postgres a great database, many of these reasons are why its now preferred by so many devs - http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2012/04/30/why-postgres/ http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2012/04/30/why-postgres/
- avenger123 13y ago
  I wouldn't say PostgresSQL has won. MySQL is still very relevant. I would say that if you are just starting out and you already know MySQL and you are proving out your MVP, MySQL is still relevant. Once you have a stable product and you need a better database, PostgresSQL is a good move up.
  - jon-wood 13y ago
    Given the number of companies who'll provide you with a fully managed Postgres installation there's no reason not start out on it for the MVP - as a user its no harder than MySQL. Even as a sysadmin its not significantly harder, just different to work with to MySQL.
- asdasf 13y ago
  I wish I lived in your world. Where I am, 90%+ of web developers believe there are two options for making web sites: "LAMP" and .net/sql server. I am constantly dealing with web developers who genuinely don't even know postgresql exists.
frakkingcylons 13y ago
I'd be most curious to know how the performance/dollar ratio stacks up to Heroku's Postgres offering.
- josephlord 13y ago
  From a very quick glance at the small end the Amazon options are a little more than half the price (Ireland single AZ instance pricing and even less reserved) but multi-AZ options are probably very similar. I don't actually know whether Heroku can failover across an AZ failure.
  - craigkerstiens 13y ago
    disclaimer: Heroku PM here By default our followers and HA is automatically cross AZ. You also have an ability to create followers across region, but we do not automatically failover on those due to latency.
    - giovannibajo1 13y ago
      Can you please explain the value proposition of using Heroku Postgres vs RDS now? Heroku's solution is 2 to 4 times more expensive for the same type of DB, and RDS even allows for reserved instances to further lower the bill.
      - craigkerstiens 13y ago
        There are a variety of differences overall. One area is we're focused more on delivering more guidance and expertise around what you're doing with your database, in addition to ensuring your database is healthy and running. An example of this is notifications that we deliver around unused indexes, where you may benefit from other indexes, or other places where you can quickly optimize your DB. This starts to free up a DBA to add higher value tasks or for smaller shops lets you get by longer without a need for a DBA. Another big area is features we deliver on top of Postgres. This ranges from followers which all you to easily scale read traffic, or allow for your database to be replicated across not just AZs but also regions. There's the other spectrum of this as well including dataclips. Dataclips make it easy to share data in a simple way, as well as build richer dashboards by integrating with google docs, or quickly prototyping APIs. If you're curious on various technical details we'll be documenting that soon but would be happy to correspond via email, craig at heroku.com
jakozaur 13y ago
Wondering what is the easiest way to convert from MySQL RDS to Postgres. Any hints?
- caioariede 13y ago
  I've used py-mysql2pgsql [1] sometime ago and it worked without any troubles. I expect this helps you. [1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql/0.1.5 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql/0.1.5
  - cjg_ 13y ago
    Fully agree on py-mysql2pqsql, awesome little tool.
ptio 13y ago
Great news! Now I don't need to setup PostgreSQL myself. Here is a related whitepaper if you still want to setup PostgreSQL yourself: http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_RDBMS_PostgreSQL.pdf http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_RDBMS_PostgreSQL.pdf
onedognight 13y ago
This is great news, but unlike for Amazon's MySQL offering, they do not yet support read replicas for PostgreSQL.
- skyebook 13y ago
  Yeah I was disappointed to see this.. Can you configure pgpool externally to talk to the replicas or are those multi-az instances a black box? I've never used RDS before so I'm curious as to how much flexibility is afforded.
  - timdorr 13y ago
    Unfortunately, no. Amazon RDS instances don't provide console access and are essentially black boxes.
    - yanivt 13y ago
      just to clarify, this isn't true ^. I log into my RDS mysql console all the time.. mysql -h -u -p from a properly configured host..
- scosman 13y ago
  Still beta, so I'm hoping that's added soon. Won't be considering RDS until it is.
kvinnako 13y ago
Somehow it seems pretty costly...Wouldn't it be cheaper for me to just run it on my virtual instance that's hosting the app and probably just back it up with S3.
- jon-wood 13y ago
  If you place no value on you're time then yes, it would be cheaper to just run it on your own EC2 instance. There's a lot to be said for not having to worry about the day to day of maintaining a database server though.
  - bjeanes 13y ago
    Well said. It's frustrating how much people want to do price comparisons on the commodity instead of the service. You're paying for the "as a service" part of PaaS, IaaS, SaaS, *aaS.
- cmelbye 13y ago
  Costly? This is dirt cheap compared to what we've been using.
michaelbuckbee 13y ago
How does this compare to Heroku's PG offering?
- NatW 13y ago
  Good question. Heroku offers an RDS plugin now only for mysql: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/amazon_rds https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/amazon_rds If/when a Heroku RDS plugin for Postgresql arrives, competing benchmarks, a cost calculator, pros and cons would be very interesting, indeed. Heroku pricing: https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql Amazon pricing: http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/
  - cmelbye 13y ago
    Doesn't their RDS add-on merely set DATABASE_URL to the URL that you provide when adding it? Are you sure it doesn't work with MySQL? There's no reason you'd need to wait for Heroku to add support for this, just spin up an RDS instance in us-east-1 and start using the URL Amazon gives you as your database URL.
    - bjeanes 13y ago
      I'm on the Heroku Add-ons team. This is correct. The RDS "add-on" is there simply for people who search for it. In reality, it's just setting DATABASE_URL, and you can do the same yourself.
- eonil 13y ago
  Heroku PG doesn't support isolated secure networking only within your hosts. Though it was free test version, I surprised to see my database is living together with many other people. (`\l`) Your database is available publicly, and you have only minimal security.
tzaman 13y ago
I guess now's the time to start thinking about leaving Heroku...
- mike_herrera 13y ago
  Heroku will still be my go-to for quick tests and experiments. But for larger projects it would be foolish to not consider PostgresRDS + Docker on AWS. *assuming they both leave beta.
- gklitt 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Lack of Postgres support on AWS has always been the one thing keeping me on Heroku.
philliphaydon 13y ago
OMG I LOVE POSTGRESQL!!!! This is awesome news! I hope we can move to it at work!
bmaeser 13y ago
this is awesome! still, i miss one essential feature - compared to mysql on aws and heroku/postgres: there is no replication for read replicas. yes, you can deploy a "hot standby" replica in another availability zone for failover, but you cant read from it.
- zwily 13y ago
  You can be sure that that will come.
  - oceanplexian 13y ago
    Probably not. Amazon has intentionally crippled external replication in MySQL for years now. It's a form of vendor lock-in and you shouldn't support it. Without replication it's impossible to migrate out of RDS without taking downtime (I've been through this and it was painful).
    - sendob 13y ago
      This seems to have changed: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/MySQL.Procedural.Exporting.NonRDSRepl.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/MySQL....
    - zwily 13y ago
      This isn't true anymore. RDS now exposes an external replication stream for Mysql. AWS actually doesn't seem to be that interested in vendor lock-in. They usually build what people ask for.
taude 13y ago
We've moved off AMZN for more custom hosting. But this is a big win for open source devs. More deoployment options is always a good thing.
natural219 13y ago
I hate PostgreSQL. Yes, I am a dummy application developer who doesn't understand database software. Every time I try to install PostgreSQL it fails. Every time I install MySQL it installs successfully with no problems. Actually, that's the extent of my experience with it, and I guess I'm fine dealing with a database that doesn't validate date formats strictly if I can use the damn database without hassle. I am totally fine using Postgres at a company or with another DB developer who knows how to set up databases properly, but if I am starting a new project, I am going to use MySQL, period.
- jhdavids8 13y ago
  Have you tried Heroku's PostgresApp postgresapp.com?
- njharman 13y ago
  Um, point of this announcement is you no longer have to install PostgreSQL!!! You can let Amazon do it for you, and scale it, back it up, maintain it etc.
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    I'm going to guess he's talking about a dev machine, which is where 90%+ of all DB installs take place.
- Keyframe 13y ago
  Yeah, psql is really hard to install. For example on ubuntu: apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib Who could install this nonsense??
  - shaunrussell 13y ago
    He is probably using Windows.
    - natural219 13y ago
      Ouch.
rachbelaid 13y ago
Great news and for people who ask them-self the questions but the version is Pg 9.3.1. Not all Pl are available, and it misses the PL/V8 and PL/Python at least. And it seems that all fdw (Foreign Data Wrapper) extensions are missing. But it's a great start, I'm looking forward to try. If anybody know if we can still access the WAL log then it will be very useful http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_P...
- aschreyer 13y ago
  PL/Python is very unlikely to appear soon unfortunately because it is an untrusted language in PostgreSQL. EDIT: you are right, PL/Python is supported as well. I only read the "Language Extensions :PL/Perl, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl" part at the top.
  - bmaeser 13y ago
    quote: "Three language extensions are included with PostgreSQL to support Perl, Python and Tcl" (http://aws.amazon.com/de/rds/postgresql/#language-ext http://aws.amazon.com/de/rds/postgresql/#language-ext)
  - aschreyer 13y ago
    PL/Python is NOT supported: http://www.databasesoup.com/2013/11/first-look-at-postgresql-rds-on-amazon.html http://www.databasesoup.com/2013/11/first-look-at-postgresql...
  - rachbelaid 13y ago
    Agree ... We may not see PL/Python very soon until somebody solve the sandboxing issues. But I was surprise to not see PL/V8 which is sandboxed
- elchief 13y ago
  Ack, half my stuff's in PLV8. Oh well.
  - 13y ago
tracker1 13y ago
I think this is great news... PostgreSQL is definitively my favorite open-source database. It's also nice to see Amazon get into the game, as hosted pg options have been fairly limited. I am slightly disappointed to not see the server-side JS support baked in, and that apparently you can't do reads from distributed replicas. Just the same, I think there will be a lot of progress in this area. Administering databases is a full-time type of responsibility. Yes, you can get pretty sane defaults, and up and running without much difficulty with MS-SQL, and mySQL has been a defacto standard in the LAMP stack. That said PostreSQL has been a rock solid RDBMS. The commercial extensions for replication have been cumbersome and expensive. Here's hoping that AWS will grow/expand the replications options/features, and that they'll grow to include JS procs as that feature stabilizes.
- j-kidd 13y ago
  It looks like the Multi-AZ setup is using block level replication such as DRBD instead of the built-in replication: > Database updates are made concurrently on the primary and standby resources to prevent replication lag. Makes me feels better for setting up my own pg cluster on EC2 a week ago, which does allow reads from the replication slave. Plus, I can provision <1000 IOPS (provisioned IOPS is damn expensive with AWS), and get to use ZFS.
  - angrybits 13y ago
    The time spent researching and building that cluster was time not spent building product. If you are low on capital then it was potentially a good tradeoff, but I'd much rather just scale up my read capacity by adding horsepower until they get around to adding read replicas. My goal is to spend as little time as possible administering my infrastructure, and running my own database cluster is the last thing on my mind.
pkmishra 13y ago
This is so fucking awesome. I have been waiting for this since long time.
falcolas 13y ago
I have but one suggestion. Unless RDS for PostgreSQL is drastically different from RDS for MySQL, you still need a DB administrator. RDS removes remarkably little of the pain of running a database instance (most of the pain that's removed is just the up front setup), and ends up adding a lot of inconveniences for your day-to-day operations. Also don't count on their replication as your backup. OK. That's two suggestions, but I think it's OK.
- cbsmith 13y ago
  As someone who is familiar with the rigamarole of PCI compliance, I respectfully disagree.
  - falcolas 13y ago
    Disagree with what? Keeping your own backups? Probably not - if you're not keeping offsite backups, you're begging to go out of business. With needing a DBA, even if you're still on RDS? I don't see what that has to do with PCI compliance. With RDS only removing the up-front setup pain, at the cost of ongoing maintenance... as someone who is also familiar with PCI (and HIPPA, and DOD) compliance, I respectfully disagree with your disagreement (well, if you're working with DOD, AWS isn't even an option to begin with). Given the choice to run my own instance of a DB on a AWS instance (which carries the same certifications as RDS), and use RDS, I will run my own instance every time. The setup just isn't onerous enough to justify the daily productivity cost.
    - cbsmith 13y ago
      > Disagree with what? I disagree with the notion that RDS removes remarkably little of the pain of running a database instance. Yes, there are projects where RDS is not a great solution, but it definitely simplifies a lot of stuff. The notion that it "only removes up-front setup pain" is silly. If you manage your databases correctly, up-front setup pain should be the vast majority of all your basic admin operations. The "at the cost of ongoing maintenance" part is a real head scratcher for me. RDS basically gives you everything you'd have with a DB on an AWS instance except a local login, which one tries to avoid using like the plague anyway.
revetkn 13y ago
Anyone know if the UUID type is supported? I see hstore and JSON are Edit: It does, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_P...
nathanwdavis 13y ago
It doesn't mention which version of PostgreSql. I hope it is 9.3. It's got to be at least 9.2 since it supports the Json datatype.
- wvanwazer 13y ago
  It is 9.3.1.
  - gingerlime 13y ago
    But it's strange that the page says that PostgreSQL includes support for ‘JSON’ data type and two JSON functions In PG 9.2 there were only two json functions[1], but 9.3 introduced more[2] [1]http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/functions-json.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/functions-json.htm... [2]http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-json.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-json.htm...
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
Useful tool to migrate from MySQL to PostgreSQL : https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter
- spwestwood 13y ago
  py-mysql2pgsql is good too: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql
lazyant 13y ago
Funny how it's a tiny bit more expensive than the mysql counterpart
gfodor 13y ago
Oh dear god yes. I just rigged up a PostgreSQL instance on Ec2 for a new project, so excited to shut it down and let amazon deal with it. Hell yes.
workhere-io 13y ago
Note that AWS' PostgreSQL offering is more expensive than its MySQL counterpart. http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- adenot 13y ago
  something wrong with the 'reserved' prices? PostgreSQL RDS micro instance falls to $0.009 per hour when reserved, while MySQL falls to $0.016 per Hour. If it isn't a typo, Postgres reserved instances are 1/5 of the on-demand price, which doesn't seem correct.
  - gfodor 13y ago
    up-front price is largely different between the two. psql looks to be 50% cheaper when reserved for 3 years. weird
LVB 13y ago
I've only ever used S3, but some of these AWS offerings do look interesting for my little projects. My question is, how do hours get calculated for billing? If I had my super low traffic blog using RDS, would I incur a few microseconds of time per DB hit, or is it rounded up to an hour, or is it the total time the DB is available period?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  You would be paying for 24 hours each day. You are renting a managed virtual server, and you pay for each hour this server is running in addition to usage fees for storage and IO operations when it's actually being accessed. It'd be $20-30/month to host the database for a very small blog.
  - chrismmccomas 13y ago
    To be fair, if you qualify for the AWS Free Usage Tier, you could run a small blog with RDS for $0 for the first year.
tomphoolery 13y ago
This is so nice. Thank you Amazon!
chenster 13y ago
Are they ever going to support DB2?
eonil 13y ago
Finally!
victorhooi 13y ago
I'm curious what the performance characteristics of this would be like. A lot of people talk about how poor the storage performance on AWS is - but this seems to offer provisioned IOPS up to 30,000 IOPS. I'm curious what sort of hardware/setup that translates to in the real world? Do you find your own dedicated setups have more throughput? And there doesn't seem to be much info on the network bandwidth between RDS and EC2 either.
benmathes 13y ago
Oh sweet, now I can actually put this up for less than $ArmAndALeg https://github.com/benmathes/earthquakes https://github.com/benmathes/earthquakes
adityamenon 13y ago
Oh, cool stuff! I'll look into using this with the Openstreetmap deployment I'm building.
noviceapp 13y ago
Hmm, interesting development. But am I the only one to see a huge gap in services between Amazon and Heroku, and one which most certainly bodes bad for Heroku? Specifically, with Heroku's recent PG 2.0 service, their 'production grade' Standard plan ranges from $50 - $3500, but "Up to 1 hr downtime per mo." ?!?1! Huh, really, with up to an hour downtime /month, you couldn't be serious about the product that runs atop this tier - a non starter me any most other SaaS businesses. Heroku's cheapest "high availability option starts at $200/month, still with "Up to 15 minutes of downtime per month."... still, this is a concern for me... Now, comparing to Amazon, their '1.7 GB memory Small DB, 1-year reserved, multi-region' is around $28/month (with storage & transfer for my app no more $35/ month). The equivalent Heroku plan, Tengu (1.7 GB mem) STARTS at $350/month!!! Wow, not I'm really rethinking my hosting platform.... Amazon looks more attractive, even if I have to do a bit of sys admin for my web server/cloud server.

593 points by teoruiz 13y ago

Does anyone know if it's pure community PostgreSQL or if there are modifications? If there are modifications, is it 100% compatible?

adrianh 13y ago

This is HUGE! I'm using the AWS stack for http://www.soundslice.com/ http://www.soundslice.com/ and I've been using MySQL instead of Postgres, purely because my hatred for MySQL is less than my hatred for being a sysadmin. It was a tradeoff, and I miss Postgres dearly every time I use MySQL. This new Amazon offering solves that. I wrote a little more about my AWS setup here: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/

pc86 13y ago
Let me just say that I absolutely love soundslice. It's a great application!
- saltyknuckles 13y ago
  Its actually really really impressive
- adrianh 13y ago
  Thanks! And it'll be even better once I migrate to Postgres. :-)
  - rabidonrails 13y ago
    Wow, Soundslice looks amazing! Excited to play around with it.
saltyknuckles 13y ago
Hell fuck yeah this is huge!
mmcclellan 13y ago
Came here to say "This is huge!", found Django creator beat me to it.
sync 13y ago
Hey, just took a look at soundslice, looks super nice. FYI, it doesn't look your payment modal works on smaller browser windows: https://www.monosnap.com/image/UvJbxMQEwkzqLH5btNJ7a9G6Q https://www.monosnap.com/image/UvJbxMQEwkzqLH5btNJ7a9G6Q ... no visible pay button, and the modal itself scrolls when you scroll the page.
- adrianh 13y ago
  Thanks very much -- I've just done a band-aid solution and moved the payment modal up, but we'll get a better solution up soon. Much appreciated!
  - pallandt 13y ago
    Chiming in with some more appreciation! Great stuff!
fat0wl 13y ago
Yea I was using MySQL on RDS just to escape the Heroku monolith. Funny that Heroku announced a new Postgres pricing model that is VERY expensive compared to old setup (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6712570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6712570) just in time to be wiped off the map by RDS.
- fat0wl 13y ago
  hey who downvoted this without replying?! Last time I badmouthed Heroku on here I got a reply from one of their employees asking me to fill out support tickets for errors I was getting in their apps...... O_o they're watching.
  - avenger123 13y ago
    No one's watching. Your initial comment just really didn't add any value. Calling Heroku monolith compared to Amazon is an understatement and I don't see Heroku being "wiped off the map" from this.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago
      https://twitter.com/scottvdp/status/401111184092315648 https://twitter.com/scottvdp/status/401111184092315648 > RDS 4XL vs Heroku Mecha: 40% cheaper on demand, 74% cheaper 1 year reserved, 82% cheaper 3 year reserved... with more features and capacity. If that's true, Heroku's Postgres offering isn't going to do well. "Wiped off the map" may be an overstatement, but not by that much.
      - fat0wl 13y ago
        If you listen closely you can hear the sound of an army of devteams uploading DB exports to Amazon.... & it would be louder if the rest could figure out where to put the custom DB URL parameter ;D
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - 13y ago
coolrhymes 13y ago
Good to see another Django creator. We are a proud django startup @kipinhall I couldn't believe my eyes when I read RDS Postgres offerings.

MrGando 13y ago

I think that the 'simple monthly calculator' hasn't yet included PostgreSQL instances?

runako 13y ago
MySQL (free) and Oracle BYOL (no additional license cost) are the same cost at RDS. Since PG is free, I'd guess the cost will be the same as MySQL.
- MrGando 13y ago
  That's what I think too, they should state MySQL/PostgreSQL or something like that in the calculator though.
  - amock 13y ago
    PostgreSQL costs more than MySQL according to http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ .
    - eonil 13y ago
      Price difference seems huge. Looks more than Oracle? Can anyone explain why?
      - runako 13y ago
        Either they updated the table since you posted, or you're misreading it. MySQL Large is $0.32/hr, PG Large is $0.336/hr, Oracle is $0.565/hr. I don't know why the MySQL/PG prices are different.
        eonil 13y ago
        My fault. I misread it. PostgreSQL has only heavy-utilization unit on reserved instance. I thought it's light utilization unit. Heavy/Large/1yr(reserved, multiAZ)/Tokyo: PostgreSQL = $1548, Oracle = $2440 Seems reasonable price. And I don't care MySQL price because it's not an option to me.

sjtgraham 13y ago

FINALLY!

frankwiles 13y ago

Been waiting for this for a long time, can finally nudge our clients that want to use RDS (for various reasons) to use a sane DB. Thanks Amazon!

thinkalone 13y ago

Here's the announcement on the AWS blog - http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-rds-for-postgresql-now-available.html http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/amazon-rds-for-postgresql...

yumraj 13y ago

I've heard about PostgreSQL and know that HN community raves about it, but am currently using RDS with MySQL. Does it make sense to migrate to PostgreSQL, I don't have a lot of data as I'm in the early stage? What are the primary advantages that PostgreSQL provides over MySQL? Any advise/pointers is appreciated.

the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
> Does it make sense to migrate to PostgreSQL, I don't have a lot of data as I'm in the early stage? What are the primary advantages that PostgreSQL provides over MySQL? Any advise/pointers is appreciated. If MySQL works for you, there is no reason to change. Some people have quite a dependency on Postgres (hstore, JSON, transactional DDL, pubsub, PLPGSQL etc.)
- jeffdavis 13y ago
  Ordinarily I would agree, but in this case, the poster said that there's not a lot of data yet so it would be easier to migrate. Choosing a database is a pretty major decision with long-term impact that might not be obvious now, so it's worth exploring a few options if you have that luxury. I think there are two times when it makes sense to consider a DB migration: (1) early on, when it's easy; (2) if you are in major trouble with your existing DB.
- gtaylor 13y ago
  > Some people have quite a dependency on Postgres Our dependency on Postgres is more to do with it being a lot safer with our data. It doesn't silently fail, the transactions have a better failure mode, and as previously pointed out it handles ALTER in production a LOT better than MySQL. The combination of safety, speed/efficiency in schema/index alteration, and its increasingly good performance are why we depend on it. The rest is just gravy.
adrianh 13y ago
Postgres actually cares about your data. Perhaps you mistakenly insert "2013-10-32" into a date column. MySQL will silently convert this to "0000-00-00" (!!). Postgres will raise an error. Perhaps you make an error in a transaction. MySQL lets you keep doing subsequent things in the transaction. Postgres treats the transaction as invalid and forces you to start over. Perhaps you want to add a column to a table that has millions of rows. With MySQL, you'll be waiting a looooong time (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463677/alter-table-without-locking-the-table http://stackoverflow.com/questions/463677/alter-table-withou...). With Postgres, it takes about a second. Of course, there are things you can do to make MySQL less horrible, and this is a generalization. But Postgres is just more respectful and more solid. Oh, and PostGIS (Postgres' geo add-on) is by far the best open-source geospatial database. If you're doing anything with geographic queries, you need to be using it. MySQL's stuff is laughable in comparison. Context: I've dealt extensively with both databases, both from the perspective of a framework author (Django) and a developer making products. I've used both databases on and off since 2001.

vocino 13y ago

This will make the ease of Elastic Beanstalk much more appealing.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

Will anyone please explain the tactical reasons why PostgreSQL won? It's pretty obvious it has. I've basically ignored the database wars for a few years, so it's kind of interesting to see that everyone's using PostgreSQL now.

kvinnako 13y ago
One of many reasons is MySql being bought by Oracle and name change/lost of community backing etc...along with some missing advanced technical features....
craigkerstiens 13y ago
I've written a couple of blog posts about what makes Postgres a great database, many of these reasons are why its now preferred by so many devs - http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2012/04/30/why-postgres/ http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2012/04/30/why-postgres/
avenger123 13y ago
I wouldn't say PostgresSQL has won. MySQL is still very relevant. I would say that if you are just starting out and you already know MySQL and you are proving out your MVP, MySQL is still relevant. Once you have a stable product and you need a better database, PostgresSQL is a good move up.
- jon-wood 13y ago
  Given the number of companies who'll provide you with a fully managed Postgres installation there's no reason not start out on it for the MVP - as a user its no harder than MySQL. Even as a sysadmin its not significantly harder, just different to work with to MySQL.
asdasf 13y ago
I wish I lived in your world. Where I am, 90%+ of web developers believe there are two options for making web sites: "LAMP" and .net/sql server. I am constantly dealing with web developers who genuinely don't even know postgresql exists.

frakkingcylons 13y ago

I'd be most curious to know how the performance/dollar ratio stacks up to Heroku's Postgres offering.

josephlord 13y ago
From a very quick glance at the small end the Amazon options are a little more than half the price (Ireland single AZ instance pricing and even less reserved) but multi-AZ options are probably very similar. I don't actually know whether Heroku can failover across an AZ failure.
- craigkerstiens 13y ago
  disclaimer: Heroku PM here By default our followers and HA is automatically cross AZ. You also have an ability to create followers across region, but we do not automatically failover on those due to latency.
  - giovannibajo1 13y ago
    Can you please explain the value proposition of using Heroku Postgres vs RDS now? Heroku's solution is 2 to 4 times more expensive for the same type of DB, and RDS even allows for reserved instances to further lower the bill.
    - craigkerstiens 13y ago
      There are a variety of differences overall. One area is we're focused more on delivering more guidance and expertise around what you're doing with your database, in addition to ensuring your database is healthy and running. An example of this is notifications that we deliver around unused indexes, where you may benefit from other indexes, or other places where you can quickly optimize your DB. This starts to free up a DBA to add higher value tasks or for smaller shops lets you get by longer without a need for a DBA. Another big area is features we deliver on top of Postgres. This ranges from followers which all you to easily scale read traffic, or allow for your database to be replicated across not just AZs but also regions. There's the other spectrum of this as well including dataclips. Dataclips make it easy to share data in a simple way, as well as build richer dashboards by integrating with google docs, or quickly prototyping APIs. If you're curious on various technical details we'll be documenting that soon but would be happy to correspond via email, craig at heroku.com

jakozaur 13y ago

Wondering what is the easiest way to convert from MySQL RDS to Postgres. Any hints?

caioariede 13y ago
I've used py-mysql2pgsql [1] sometime ago and it worked without any troubles. I expect this helps you. [1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql/0.1.5 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql/0.1.5
- cjg_ 13y ago
  Fully agree on py-mysql2pqsql, awesome little tool.

ptio 13y ago

Great news! Now I don't need to setup PostgreSQL myself. Here is a related whitepaper if you still want to setup PostgreSQL yourself: http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_RDBMS_PostgreSQL.pdf http://media.amazonwebservices.com/AWS_RDBMS_PostgreSQL.pdf

onedognight 13y ago

This is great news, but unlike for Amazon's MySQL offering, they do not yet support read replicas for PostgreSQL.

skyebook 13y ago
Yeah I was disappointed to see this.. Can you configure pgpool externally to talk to the replicas or are those multi-az instances a black box? I've never used RDS before so I'm curious as to how much flexibility is afforded.
- timdorr 13y ago
  Unfortunately, no. Amazon RDS instances don't provide console access and are essentially black boxes.
  - yanivt 13y ago
    just to clarify, this isn't true ^. I log into my RDS mysql console all the time.. mysql -h -u -p from a properly configured host..
scosman 13y ago
Still beta, so I'm hoping that's added soon. Won't be considering RDS until it is.

kvinnako 13y ago

Somehow it seems pretty costly...Wouldn't it be cheaper for me to just run it on my virtual instance that's hosting the app and probably just back it up with S3.

jon-wood 13y ago
If you place no value on you're time then yes, it would be cheaper to just run it on your own EC2 instance. There's a lot to be said for not having to worry about the day to day of maintaining a database server though.
- bjeanes 13y ago
  Well said. It's frustrating how much people want to do price comparisons on the commodity instead of the service. You're paying for the "as a service" part of PaaS, IaaS, SaaS, *aaS.
cmelbye 13y ago
Costly? This is dirt cheap compared to what we've been using.

michaelbuckbee 13y ago

How does this compare to Heroku's PG offering?

NatW 13y ago
Good question. Heroku offers an RDS plugin now only for mysql: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/amazon_rds https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/amazon_rds If/when a Heroku RDS plugin for Postgresql arrives, competing benchmarks, a cost calculator, pros and cons would be very interesting, indeed. Heroku pricing: https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql https://addons.heroku.com/heroku-postgresql Amazon pricing: http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/
- cmelbye 13y ago
  Doesn't their RDS add-on merely set DATABASE_URL to the URL that you provide when adding it? Are you sure it doesn't work with MySQL? There's no reason you'd need to wait for Heroku to add support for this, just spin up an RDS instance in us-east-1 and start using the URL Amazon gives you as your database URL.
  - bjeanes 13y ago
    I'm on the Heroku Add-ons team. This is correct. The RDS "add-on" is there simply for people who search for it. In reality, it's just setting DATABASE_URL, and you can do the same yourself.
eonil 13y ago
Heroku PG doesn't support isolated secure networking only within your hosts. Though it was free test version, I surprised to see my database is living together with many other people. (`\l`) Your database is available publicly, and you have only minimal security.

tzaman 13y ago

I guess now's the time to start thinking about leaving Heroku...

mike_herrera 13y ago
Heroku will still be my go-to for quick tests and experiments. But for larger projects it would be foolish to not consider PostgresRDS + Docker on AWS. *assuming they both leave beta.
gklitt 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. Lack of Postgres support on AWS has always been the one thing keeping me on Heroku.

philliphaydon 13y ago

OMG I LOVE POSTGRESQL!!!! This is awesome news! I hope we can move to it at work!

bmaeser 13y ago

this is awesome! still, i miss one essential feature - compared to mysql on aws and heroku/postgres: there is no replication for read replicas. yes, you can deploy a "hot standby" replica in another availability zone for failover, but you cant read from it.

zwily 13y ago
You can be sure that that will come.
- oceanplexian 13y ago
  Probably not. Amazon has intentionally crippled external replication in MySQL for years now. It's a form of vendor lock-in and you shouldn't support it. Without replication it's impossible to migrate out of RDS without taking downtime (I've been through this and it was painful).
  - sendob 13y ago
    This seems to have changed: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/MySQL.Procedural.Exporting.NonRDSRepl.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/MySQL....
  - zwily 13y ago
    This isn't true anymore. RDS now exposes an external replication stream for Mysql. AWS actually doesn't seem to be that interested in vendor lock-in. They usually build what people ask for.

taude 13y ago

We've moved off AMZN for more custom hosting. But this is a big win for open source devs. More deoployment options is always a good thing.

natural219 13y ago

I hate PostgreSQL. Yes, I am a dummy application developer who doesn't understand database software. Every time I try to install PostgreSQL it fails. Every time I install MySQL it installs successfully with no problems. Actually, that's the extent of my experience with it, and I guess I'm fine dealing with a database that doesn't validate date formats strictly if I can use the damn database without hassle. I am totally fine using Postgres at a company or with another DB developer who knows how to set up databases properly, but if I am starting a new project, I am going to use MySQL, period.

jhdavids8 13y ago
Have you tried Heroku's PostgresApp postgresapp.com?
njharman 13y ago
Um, point of this announcement is you no longer have to install PostgreSQL!!! You can let Amazon do it for you, and scale it, back it up, maintain it etc.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  I'm going to guess he's talking about a dev machine, which is where 90%+ of all DB installs take place.
Keyframe 13y ago
Yeah, psql is really hard to install. For example on ubuntu: apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib Who could install this nonsense??
- shaunrussell 13y ago
  He is probably using Windows.
  - natural219 13y ago
    Ouch.

rachbelaid 13y ago

Great news and for people who ask them-self the questions but the version is Pg 9.3.1. Not all Pl are available, and it misses the PL/V8 and PL/Python at least. And it seems that all fdw (Foreign Data Wrapper) extensions are missing. But it's a great start, I'm looking forward to try. If anybody know if we can still access the WAL log then it will be very useful http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_P...

aschreyer 13y ago
PL/Python is very unlikely to appear soon unfortunately because it is an untrusted language in PostgreSQL. EDIT: you are right, PL/Python is supported as well. I only read the "Language Extensions :PL/Perl, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl" part at the top.
- bmaeser 13y ago
  quote: "Three language extensions are included with PostgreSQL to support Perl, Python and Tcl" (http://aws.amazon.com/de/rds/postgresql/#language-ext http://aws.amazon.com/de/rds/postgresql/#language-ext)
- aschreyer 13y ago
  PL/Python is NOT supported: http://www.databasesoup.com/2013/11/first-look-at-postgresql-rds-on-amazon.html http://www.databasesoup.com/2013/11/first-look-at-postgresql...
- rachbelaid 13y ago
  Agree ... We may not see PL/Python very soon until somebody solve the sandboxing issues. But I was surprise to not see PL/V8 which is sandboxed
elchief 13y ago
Ack, half my stuff's in PLV8. Oh well.
- 13y ago

tracker1 13y ago

I think this is great news... PostgreSQL is definitively my favorite open-source database. It's also nice to see Amazon get into the game, as hosted pg options have been fairly limited. I am slightly disappointed to not see the server-side JS support baked in, and that apparently you can't do reads from distributed replicas. Just the same, I think there will be a lot of progress in this area. Administering databases is a full-time type of responsibility. Yes, you can get pretty sane defaults, and up and running without much difficulty with MS-SQL, and mySQL has been a defacto standard in the LAMP stack. That said PostreSQL has been a rock solid RDBMS. The commercial extensions for replication have been cumbersome and expensive. Here's hoping that AWS will grow/expand the replications options/features, and that they'll grow to include JS procs as that feature stabilizes.

j-kidd 13y ago
It looks like the Multi-AZ setup is using block level replication such as DRBD instead of the built-in replication: > Database updates are made concurrently on the primary and standby resources to prevent replication lag. Makes me feels better for setting up my own pg cluster on EC2 a week ago, which does allow reads from the replication slave. Plus, I can provision <1000 IOPS (provisioned IOPS is damn expensive with AWS), and get to use ZFS.
- angrybits 13y ago
  The time spent researching and building that cluster was time not spent building product. If you are low on capital then it was potentially a good tradeoff, but I'd much rather just scale up my read capacity by adding horsepower until they get around to adding read replicas. My goal is to spend as little time as possible administering my infrastructure, and running my own database cluster is the last thing on my mind.

pkmishra 13y ago

This is so fucking awesome. I have been waiting for this since long time.

falcolas 13y ago

I have but one suggestion. Unless RDS for PostgreSQL is drastically different from RDS for MySQL, you still need a DB administrator. RDS removes remarkably little of the pain of running a database instance (most of the pain that's removed is just the up front setup), and ends up adding a lot of inconveniences for your day-to-day operations. Also don't count on their replication as your backup. OK. That's two suggestions, but I think it's OK.

cbsmith 13y ago
As someone who is familiar with the rigamarole of PCI compliance, I respectfully disagree.
- falcolas 13y ago
  Disagree with what? Keeping your own backups? Probably not - if you're not keeping offsite backups, you're begging to go out of business. With needing a DBA, even if you're still on RDS? I don't see what that has to do with PCI compliance. With RDS only removing the up-front setup pain, at the cost of ongoing maintenance... as someone who is also familiar with PCI (and HIPPA, and DOD) compliance, I respectfully disagree with your disagreement (well, if you're working with DOD, AWS isn't even an option to begin with). Given the choice to run my own instance of a DB on a AWS instance (which carries the same certifications as RDS), and use RDS, I will run my own instance every time. The setup just isn't onerous enough to justify the daily productivity cost.
  - cbsmith 13y ago
    > Disagree with what? I disagree with the notion that RDS removes remarkably little of the pain of running a database instance. Yes, there are projects where RDS is not a great solution, but it definitely simplifies a lot of stuff. The notion that it "only removes up-front setup pain" is silly. If you manage your databases correctly, up-front setup pain should be the vast majority of all your basic admin operations. The "at the cost of ongoing maintenance" part is a real head scratcher for me. RDS basically gives you everything you'd have with a DB on an AWS instance except a local login, which one tries to avoid using like the plague anyway.

revetkn 13y ago

Anyone know if the UUID type is supported? I see hstore and JSON are Edit: It does, see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_P...

nathanwdavis 13y ago

It doesn't mention which version of PostgreSql. I hope it is 9.3. It's got to be at least 9.2 since it supports the Json datatype.

wvanwazer 13y ago
It is 9.3.1.
- gingerlime 13y ago
  But it's strange that the page says that PostgreSQL includes support for ‘JSON’ data type and two JSON functions In PG 9.2 there were only two json functions[1], but 9.3 introduced more[2] [1]http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/functions-json.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/functions-json.htm... [2]http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-json.html http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/functions-json.htm...

simonebrunozzi 13y ago

Useful tool to migrate from MySQL to PostgreSQL : https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter

spwestwood 13y ago
py-mysql2pgsql is good too: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql https://pypi.python.org/pypi/py-mysql2pgsql

lazyant 13y ago

Funny how it's a tiny bit more expensive than the mysql counterpart

gfodor 13y ago

Oh dear god yes. I just rigged up a PostgreSQL instance on Ec2 for a new project, so excited to shut it down and let amazon deal with it. Hell yes.

workhere-io 13y ago

Note that AWS' PostgreSQL offering is more expensive than its MySQL counterpart. http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
adenot 13y ago
something wrong with the 'reserved' prices? PostgreSQL RDS micro instance falls to $0.009 per hour when reserved, while MySQL falls to $0.016 per Hour. If it isn't a typo, Postgres reserved instances are 1/5 of the on-demand price, which doesn't seem correct.
- gfodor 13y ago
  up-front price is largely different between the two. psql looks to be 50% cheaper when reserved for 3 years. weird

LVB 13y ago

I've only ever used S3, but some of these AWS offerings do look interesting for my little projects. My question is, how do hours get calculated for billing? If I had my super low traffic blog using RDS, would I incur a few microseconds of time per DB hit, or is it rounded up to an hour, or is it the total time the DB is available period?

dangrossman 13y ago
You would be paying for 24 hours each day. You are renting a managed virtual server, and you pay for each hour this server is running in addition to usage fees for storage and IO operations when it's actually being accessed. It'd be $20-30/month to host the database for a very small blog.
- chrismmccomas 13y ago
  To be fair, if you qualify for the AWS Free Usage Tier, you could run a small blog with RDS for $0 for the first year.

tomphoolery 13y ago

This is so nice. Thank you Amazon!

chenster 13y ago

Are they ever going to support DB2?

eonil 13y ago

Finally!

victorhooi 13y ago

I'm curious what the performance characteristics of this would be like. A lot of people talk about how poor the storage performance on AWS is - but this seems to offer provisioned IOPS up to 30,000 IOPS. I'm curious what sort of hardware/setup that translates to in the real world? Do you find your own dedicated setups have more throughput? And there doesn't seem to be much info on the network bandwidth between RDS and EC2 either.

benmathes 13y ago

Oh sweet, now I can actually put this up for less than $ArmAndALeg https://github.com/benmathes/earthquakes https://github.com/benmathes/earthquakes

adityamenon 13y ago

Oh, cool stuff! I'll look into using this with the Openstreetmap deployment I'm building.

noviceapp 13y ago

Hmm, interesting development. But am I the only one to see a huge gap in services between Amazon and Heroku, and one which most certainly bodes bad for Heroku? Specifically, with Heroku's recent PG 2.0 service, their 'production grade' Standard plan ranges from $50 - $3500, but "Up to 1 hr downtime per mo." ?!?1! Huh, really, with up to an hour downtime /month, you couldn't be serious about the product that runs atop this tier - a non starter me any most other SaaS businesses. Heroku's cheapest "high availability option starts at $200/month, still with "Up to 15 minutes of downtime per month."... still, this is a concern for me... Now, comparing to Amazon, their '1.7 GB memory Small DB, 1-year reserved, multi-region' is around $28/month (with storage & transfer for my app no more $35/ month). The equivalent Heroku plan, Tengu (1.7 GB mem) STARTS at $350/month!!! Wow, not I'm really rethinking my hosting platform.... Amazon looks more attractive, even if I have to do a bit of sys admin for my web server/cloud server.