Elastic Computer Cloud

1295 Words3 Pages

INTRODUCTION: With cloud computing, Amazon has enabled the usage of internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications and created an environment where connectivity and availability is unobtrusive and prevalent. Amazon offers two options for hosting applications and databases. Amazon EC2 with Elastic Block Storage allows one to run a MySQL database server on Elastic Compute Cloud, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider, with Elastic Block Storage (EBS). Meanwhile, another option called Amazon’s Relational Database Services (RDS) is a scalable relational database in the cloud with high availability.

COMPARISON: Below is a detailed comparison of different features of both options.

• SET-UP: Once a MySQL is mounted on an instance of EC2, it can be up and running instantly without much time or effort required. Amazon’s EC2 comes with a set of API command line tools for different Linux distributions and for use with different File Systems to facilitate easy transition to the cloud. If a MySQL database exists already, it can be easily migrated to EC2 by creating an EBS volume, attaching that volume to EC2 and finally mounting the MySQL on that volume.

On the other hand, Amazon RDS has an efficient management console that helps with easy set-up and monitoring of resources. RDS provides instant access to the user’s own database software by deploying it over their own database instance. It also provides 10 GB of free data tier for people to experiment with RDS before taking the big step. Amazon RDS is more suited for new projects because it is easier to start fresh on RDS rather than migrate GBs worth of data to an unfamiliar territory. It also offers multiple features during initial set up such as Multi-AZ depl...

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...chosen when a company is in its initial stages and has no knowledge over the amount of storage it would require and cannot afford to rents its own servers and hire a DBA to monitor the database constantly for optimized performance. Hosting a MySQL over EC2 can be selected by more sophisticated or established organizations who can dedicate resources and efforts and whose priorities are optimization, customization, maintenance and security of data and database.

REFERENCES:
(i) http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1663
(ii) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4806272/what-are-the-respective-advantages-limitations-of-amazon-rds-vs-ec2-with-mysql
(iii) http://sysbench.sourceforge.net/
(iv) http://blog.observu.com/2011/05/rds-vs-mysql-on-ec2-benchmark/
(v) http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/06/ins-and-outs-of-running-mysql-on-aws.html
(vi) http://aws.amazon.com/rds/mysql/

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