4 ms·

this is kind of a big deal.

cperciva 17y ago
It's not as big as it sounds -- this isn't a scalable relational database service. As far as I can see, this is just EC2 instances with mysql preinstalled.
- fookyong 17y ago
  ah right. that said, it does remove one layer of complexity for the people who just want cloud-based DBs. before now we would have to either sign up with a 3rd party who would pipe data to Amazon, or manually configure EC2 instances - neither of which I particularly wanted to mess with. I definitely want to give this a whirl.
- bobbyi 17y ago
  You are paying extra for having them handle backups for you.
  - cperciva 17y ago
    Looks to me like the backups are just Elastic Block Store snapshots -- which are available to normal EC2 users just like they are to Amazon RDS users.
- timf 17y ago
  While it does run as an instance (looks like you don't get shell access), they provide new native API calls for adding and removing nodes on demand, and they will maintain the stack and backups for you. And in the future, API calls for automatically putting replicated DBs across availability zones. I would be less interested in it if it was not as a standalone instance per customer. Can you imagine having someone with a valid account into a shared MySQL server (and a stolen credit card) poking around all day? (especially on MySQL vulnerability announcement days)
  - cperciva 17y ago
    I would be less interested in it if it was not as a standalone instance per customer. I absolutely agree. My point was just that this seems to be Amazon wrapping up their existing service in a way which is easier to use and more marketable, rather than actually releasing something new. (Not that there is anything wrong with this, of course -- I'm sure there are many people who don't want to be bothered with figuring out how to get MySQL configured on EC2.)
    - timf 17y ago
      I agree RDS is on the lower end of novelty and excitement... And once you have VMs and a network, what could be considered truly new? Was EBS new? We can create a clustered filesystem with GNBD exports without Amazon's help, too.
- seldo 17y ago
  Agreed. When I read the headline I nearly creamed my jeans: finally! A scalable database in the cloud! Bring it! But no, it's just MySQL in the cloud. That's great and all, but it's not going to solve the scalability problems of MySQL. Does anybody do memcache-in-the-cloud yet?
  - qohen 17y ago
    > Does anybody do memcache-in-the-cloud yet? You might want to look at what Northscale is up to: http://www.northscale.com/ http://www.northscale.com/ Related: http://blog.northscale.com/northscale-blog/2009/08/mrroboto-the-ami-story.html http://blog.northscale.com/northscale-blog/2009/08/mrroboto-...

It's not as big as it sounds -- this isn't a scalable relational database service. As far as I can see, this is just EC2 instances with mysql preinstalled.

fookyong 17y ago
ah right. that said, it does remove one layer of complexity for the people who just want cloud-based DBs. before now we would have to either sign up with a 3rd party who would pipe data to Amazon, or manually configure EC2 instances - neither of which I particularly wanted to mess with. I definitely want to give this a whirl.
bobbyi 17y ago
You are paying extra for having them handle backups for you.
- cperciva 17y ago
  Looks to me like the backups are just Elastic Block Store snapshots -- which are available to normal EC2 users just like they are to Amazon RDS users.
timf 17y ago
While it does run as an instance (looks like you don't get shell access), they provide new native API calls for adding and removing nodes on demand, and they will maintain the stack and backups for you. And in the future, API calls for automatically putting replicated DBs across availability zones. I would be less interested in it if it was not as a standalone instance per customer. Can you imagine having someone with a valid account into a shared MySQL server (and a stolen credit card) poking around all day? (especially on MySQL vulnerability announcement days)
- cperciva 17y ago
  I would be less interested in it if it was not as a standalone instance per customer. I absolutely agree. My point was just that this seems to be Amazon wrapping up their existing service in a way which is easier to use and more marketable, rather than actually releasing something new. (Not that there is anything wrong with this, of course -- I'm sure there are many people who don't want to be bothered with figuring out how to get MySQL configured on EC2.)
  - timf 17y ago
    I agree RDS is on the lower end of novelty and excitement... And once you have VMs and a network, what could be considered truly new? Was EBS new? We can create a clustered filesystem with GNBD exports without Amazon's help, too.
seldo 17y ago
Agreed. When I read the headline I nearly creamed my jeans: finally! A scalable database in the cloud! Bring it! But no, it's just MySQL in the cloud. That's great and all, but it's not going to solve the scalability problems of MySQL. Does anybody do memcache-in-the-cloud yet?
- qohen 17y ago
  > Does anybody do memcache-in-the-cloud yet? You might want to look at what Northscale is up to: http://www.northscale.com/ http://www.northscale.com/ Related: http://blog.northscale.com/northscale-blog/2009/08/mrroboto-the-ami-story.html http://blog.northscale.com/northscale-blog/2009/08/mrroboto-...