4 ms·

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
      - dpritchett 13y ago
        Heroku customer here, can verify that dataclips are awesome. Haven't done the math on price vs. performance lately though.
      - jontonsoup 13y ago
        I just switched off heroku after using it for a couple years(sorry! I wish I could have stayed). I will attest dataclips are really cool, but your guy's pricing is out of wack (and customer support is eh).
      - giovannibajo1 13y ago
        Like others, I also agree dataclips are very cool (I even blogged about them: http://giovanni.bajo.it/post/51299442521/making-monitoring-graphs-for-your-ceo-with-zero-code http://giovanni.bajo.it/post/51299442521/making-monitoring-g...). I understand that "forks" and "follows" are easy concepts, stats are cools, etc. but I personally wouldn't want to pay double or triple for that (and I'm not a DBA, so I feel the pain). Not that my word counts much as I'm on the smallest Heroku production plan, so I guess my bill isn't exactly interesting for this kind of discussion. In my case, I would say that even saving $25 off $50 can be offset by these additional niceties. But, I don't know what I would think if I were a customer paying $1000/mo.
- fdr 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. Did you add disk? People seldom do, I can attest it's a big part of the bill... > I don't actually know whether Heroku can failover across an AZ failure. "Followers" have preferred another AZ for quite some time -- almost since the beginning -- and Heroku Postgres HA is based on similar technology. So, yes.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    No, I didn't take storage or IOPs into account but you do get more memory and the flexibility if the Heroku options don't fit you. So pricing wise both double if you go multi-AZ. I didn't claim to have done a detailed price comparison but a quick look at the small sizes which are currently the ones relevant to me.
    - fdr 13y ago
      > No, I didn't take storage or IOPs into account but you do get more memory and the flexibility if the Heroku options don't fit you. No doubt about that. To date, Heroku's product model has preference for fewer, but common choices rather than more flexibility. Heroku's staff sees fit to give in sometimes, but coarsely speaking, that's pretty much how it goes.
- cmelbye 13y ago
  The Multi-AZ options aren't similar, they're half the price as well (comparing a Multi-AZ RDS setup with a Heroku Postgres instance that has an equivalent follower instance.)
- erikcw 13y ago
  One other issue to consider is that AWS Micro DB Instances have "low" I/O capacity and no provisioned IOPS. Last I heard Heroku is hosted on top of AWS. Does anyone know if Heroku's cheapest Postgres plan is hosted on a dedicated AWS Micro instance, or do they buy large AWS instances and host multiple databases on each box thereby potentially providing more IO performance?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    IIRC, you get a dedicated database not a dedicated PG cluster, so presumably their will be multiple plans hosted on the same underyling server instance.

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
    - dpritchett 13y ago
      Heroku customer here, can verify that dataclips are awesome. Haven't done the math on price vs. performance lately though.
    - jontonsoup 13y ago
      I just switched off heroku after using it for a couple years(sorry! I wish I could have stayed). I will attest dataclips are really cool, but your guy's pricing is out of wack (and customer support is eh).
    - giovannibajo1 13y ago
      Like others, I also agree dataclips are very cool (I even blogged about them: http://giovanni.bajo.it/post/51299442521/making-monitoring-graphs-for-your-ceo-with-zero-code http://giovanni.bajo.it/post/51299442521/making-monitoring-g...). I understand that "forks" and "follows" are easy concepts, stats are cools, etc. but I personally wouldn't want to pay double or triple for that (and I'm not a DBA, so I feel the pain). Not that my word counts much as I'm on the smallest Heroku production plan, so I guess my bill isn't exactly interesting for this kind of discussion. In my case, I would say that even saving $25 off $50 can be offset by these additional niceties. But, I don't know what I would think if I were a customer paying $1000/mo.
fdr 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. Did you add disk? People seldom do, I can attest it's a big part of the bill... > I don't actually know whether Heroku can failover across an AZ failure. "Followers" have preferred another AZ for quite some time -- almost since the beginning -- and Heroku Postgres HA is based on similar technology. So, yes.
- josephlord 13y ago
  No, I didn't take storage or IOPs into account but you do get more memory and the flexibility if the Heroku options don't fit you. So pricing wise both double if you go multi-AZ. I didn't claim to have done a detailed price comparison but a quick look at the small sizes which are currently the ones relevant to me.
  - fdr 13y ago
    > No, I didn't take storage or IOPs into account but you do get more memory and the flexibility if the Heroku options don't fit you. No doubt about that. To date, Heroku's product model has preference for fewer, but common choices rather than more flexibility. Heroku's staff sees fit to give in sometimes, but coarsely speaking, that's pretty much how it goes.
cmelbye 13y ago
The Multi-AZ options aren't similar, they're half the price as well (comparing a Multi-AZ RDS setup with a Heroku Postgres instance that has an equivalent follower instance.)
erikcw 13y ago
One other issue to consider is that AWS Micro DB Instances have "low" I/O capacity and no provisioned IOPS. Last I heard Heroku is hosted on top of AWS. Does anyone know if Heroku's cheapest Postgres plan is hosted on a dedicated AWS Micro instance, or do they buy large AWS instances and host multiple databases on each box thereby potentially providing more IO performance?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  IIRC, you get a dedicated database not a dedicated PG cluster, so presumably their will be multiple plans hosted on the same underyling server instance.