Thread

I’ve been using Amazon S3 for a couple of years to offload graphics for some EE sites. Now Amazon has RDS.

Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS.

Looks promising. On a per-gigabyte basis, the pricing is similar to Amazon S3, which is similar to a good (not cheapie) host service (Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc.). Amazon S3 has been remarkably dependable.

Interesting, I have heard of people using cs3 effectively - although personally I have not had to deal with mega visitors and requests. How are you using it gramps - can you share?Reseller or just a comfort of performance?
RDS looks very…very nice.
Small DB Instance: 1.7 GB memory, 1 ECU ...man this is equal to an entry level dedicated server.
Let down is:

However, Amazon SimpleDB is not a relational database, and does not offer some features needed in certain applications, e.g. complex transactions or joins.

It would be nice if the db could do some heavy lifting rather than requests.

Thanks!

How are you using it gramps - can you share? Reseller or just a comfort of performance?

Not yet. Still trying to see if the price/performance is competitive. At this point, it looks better for those sites with LOTS of traffic and a need to have a dedicated or load-balanced server.

I’ve had good success with Amazon S3 to offload graphics from clients with shared servers (dependability is better than price). RDS features are good, though.

RDS looks very…very nice.
Small DB Instance: 1.7 GB memory, 1 ECU ...man this is equal to an entry level dedicated server.

Let down is:

However, Amazon SimpleDB is not a relational database, and does not offer some features needed in certain applications, e.g. complex transactions or joins.

It would be nice if the db could do some heavy lifting rather than requests.

That’s SimpleDB, not Amazon RDS. They’re different. RDS is MySQL 5.1.x but it’s also configured as InnoDB and not ISAM. Does that pose a problem with EE?

Yeah I was thinking the same…why is EE not using stored procedures of MySQL 5.x? I suppose it makes the application more portable and cross-host ready…but back in day I was always advised to ‘let the db’ do as much work as possible rather than web server (pages/scripts). It has been a long since I did anything from scratch…

Heck, we’re still supporting MySQL 3.23.32 FWIW… Well, EE 1.6.8 is, that’s going to change, I think.

Heck, we’re still supporting MySQL 3.23.32 FWIW… Well, EE 1.6.8 is, that’s going to change, I think.

It’s obviously a pragmatic business decision for EE (and other PHP/MySQL apps) to support a wide spectrum of PHP and MySQL versions. Both are free and nearly ubiquitous on hosts throughout the world, hence easy to set up and manage, and scale to substantial traffic.

Can EE handle InnoDB tables, or is there a specific requirement for ISAM (or, is it table dependent?)?

It’s obviously a pragmatic business decision for EE (and other PHP/MySQL apps) to support a wide spectrum of PHP and MySQL versions.

Let’s put it the other way round: it makes no sense to demand the latest & greatest, there still are people out there on PHP 4. It’s a reality we’re facing.

Can EE handle InnoDB tables, or is there a specific requirement for ISAM (or, is it table dependent?)?

Yes, the storage engine should not matter.

Yes, the storage engine should not matter.

That’s good news.

I’m not comfortable with RDS pricing. Add up all the pieces and anything but a big site with lots of traffic would do better with EngineHosting or PairLite (both of which are moderately priced hosts).

Pricing is based on a combination of necessary components, including DB instances, storage, backup, bandwidth, and I/O requests. That can add up. Amazon RDS isn’t apples to apples with Amazon S3, but pricing is similar. For example, I have a few sites hosted at PairLite (moderately priced shared host), which includes 50 gigs of bandwidth for what amounts to $8.25 a month. Amazon RDS bandwidth (data transfer) alone for the same amount would be $8.50 a month, before adding the other requirements.

I’m convinced that Amazon’s offerings are more beneficial for sites with heftier DB and bandwidth requirements.

RDS isn’t much different than running MySQL on EC2 with EBS. With RDS you sacrifice some control for some automation (automatic backups and software updates). If RDS ever offers automatic failover, that will be a game changer.

RDS isn’t much different than running MySQL on EC2 with EBS. With RDS you sacrifice some control for some automation (automatic backups and software updates). If RDS ever offers automatic failover, that will be a game changer.

Agreed.

Any experience in setting up EE configuration with RDS or EC2/EBS?

I’m interested in the whole Amazon EC2/RDS combination for EE.  Currently using Rackspace Cloud and have had a ton of issues with them the last 6-7 weeks and need an option.

Is anyone using EE with Amazon?  Easy to set up?  Tips?

Thanks!  😉

RDS isn’t much different than running MySQL on EC2 with EBS. With RDS you sacrifice some control for some automation (automatic backups and software updates). If RDS ever offers automatic failover, that will be a game changer.

Agreed.

Any experience in setting up EE configuration with RDS or EC2/EBS?

December and January have been bad for performance from our perspective.  Between January 2009 and early November 2009 we’d been happy with performance (and it did well on a large Halloween site (halloween.com), without hiccups that our DQC server had in 2008).  See the first two links below give a pretty good overview of the recent issues - TechCrunch was quite unhappy as are a lot of other people.

I am to the point of moving the site to AWS until Rackspace gets performance up.  My understanding of the process is this for EE:

1. Swapping RDS addresses for the current mysql addresses in the EE config files.
2. Picking an AMI to use.
3. Customize it.
4. Uploading the content to a persistent directory and then moving it to the server or doing a sym link to that directory.
5. Getting an elastic IP from Amazon.
6. Build and upload the new AMI
7. After testing, switching DNS entries to point there.

If anyone has additional tips (e.g. a good AMI to use, whether to use a persistent directory and sym link or what?) or steps that are missing etc, I would love to hear them.

I truly think that Rackspace is trying, but I think the clusters in the cloud are over-sold or over-used (or have config issues?) and while they are attempting to fix it, it isn’t as if they can just switch on 500 more machines over night to fix it.  All that is conjecture since they haven’t really given a lot of details which is frustrating.  (If you look here, you can see even more, including the spikes in page download time in January: http://www.christianriley.com/2010/01/the-cloud-is-raining-degraded-rackspace-cloud-and-no-suitable-nodes-on-rackspace-cloud/  )

Anyway, these two links give a good overview, here is what TechCrunch said: 
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/18/rackspace-down/
and here:
http://strategyinprinciple.com/case-study-how-do-we-get-fanatical-support

Some other links that describe the issues:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/01/14/performance-problems-for-rackspace-cloud/
http://cloudfail.net/category/rackspace/rackspace-cloud-sites
http://www.rackspace.com/blog/?p=767

I’m also interested in Amazon EC2/RDS combination for EE. From what I read, AMI’s are configured to run Tomcat and work with EC2Deploy.

The EC2 core framework manages EC2 instances, configures MySQL, Tomcat, Terracotta and Apache and deploys the application.

Chris, what kind of issues have you had using Rackspace Cloud? I was thinking about that as an alternative option.

p.s.  I really want to like it as we did until November and I really hope they get any issues resolved because the concept is good.

I did successfully move one EE site from Rackspace Cloud to AWS/EC2.  It has only been a few hours, but it already appears that AWS is doing much better performance-wise.

I ended up not using RDS yet, just mysql running on the instance.  That may change in the future, but if I can get it together, I’ll post the steps I used to make the transition. 

It certainly is possible, just required a few changes in organization and some minor customizations on the AMI.

why is EE not using stored procedures of MySQL 5.x? I suppose it makes the application more portable and cross-host ready…but back in day I was always advised to ‘let the db’ do as much work as possible rather than web server (pages/scripts).

Stored Procedures aren’t very helpful in terms of performance. They also typically mean you’re hand-writing your SQL, which usually means you’re doing something wrong.
http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/archive/2006/05/25/145450.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2003/11/18/38178.aspx
As always, Google has more.