Hi Morten,
It all depends on what your goal is. I have a little experience with EC2
and Google App Engine so I'll try to give some insight concerning those.
EC2 is very powerful but besides hardware isn't much different than a
dedicated server. You will still need to do admin type maintenance.
You may experience hardware issues but you don't have to fix. You just
have to bring up a new instance.
Amazon can handle whatever load you're going to throw at it. There are
companies that will handle load balancing and maintaining the right
number of instances but the ones I've seen are fairly expensive compared
to raw EC2. If you don't go with those companies you'll need to either
maintain nodes manually or come up with some automated system. There may
be open source systems out there for managing your instances, I don't know.
I don't know what you're paying now so it's hard to compare. The
cheapest you'll pay with EC2 is probably around $50/month for reserved
instances.
I can't say much about the speed around the globe but you can use
Amazon's CDN, CloudFront, for fast access.
You can run MySQL on EC2.
Google App engine is the opposite end of the spectrum. You write your
web app according to Google's standards and publish it, Google takes
care of the rest.
You shouldn't even notice hardware failures as long as it isn't the
whole datacenter.
Google handles the scaling for you. The rules they impose are designed
to make your web app scalable in their system. They automatically bring
up the number of nodes needed for your load.
Prices for me so far have been unbeatable - free! They estimate that you
can handle about 5 million page views/month without having to pay anything.
It should be fast around the globe but I haven't seen any benchmarks.
As I said above, Google handles the scaling for you so you don't have to
worry about it.
The biggest struggle for me is working with BigTable instead of a
relational database.
Stripes from the repository does work on Google App Engine. Stripersist
works with BigTable but it's kind of awkward because of the limitations
on transactions.
You won't be able to use SSL with Google App Engine unless you're using
the app spot domain name (https://myappid.appspot.com). You can use SSL
with EC2 with your own domain name.
I'd recommend giving both a try and see which one you like. Right now, I
think Google App Engine is in a category by itself but there are lots of
competitors for EC2 because it's basically virtual private servers with
some nice features on top.
You can also go with a hybrid approach, keeping your servers as is but
putting all your static content on Amazon's S3 and possibly making it
available via CloudFront. S3 has the ability to create temporary URLs to
your content so when you sell music you can send a link that expires in
an hour for example.
Aaron
Morten Matras wrote:
Our Stripes - Hibernate - MySQL application: http://www.redantenna.com
is running on a "normal" windows/tomcat based dedicated server. It is
causing some problems and we're ready to move to a cloud based
environment to achieve:
- No more hardware issues
- Scaleability
- Low prices (At least compared to the prices we get now)
- Fast download from around the globe
- Tools for handling our deployment process automatic.
I've looked into amazon EC2 and have seen others like gigaspaces and
google app engine offer similar services.
Now please advice on how to move on:
- How do we move from MySQL to a cloud based environment?
- How do we utilize the cloud stuff in a nice way instead of just
using the architecture we are used to?
- What tools should we use?
- What service should we choose? (Any experience?)
Thanks
--
Morten Matras
Consultant
Blob Communication ApS
Svendsagervej 42
DK-5240 Odense NØ
P: (+45) 76 6-5-4-3-2-1
W: http://www.blobcom.com
E: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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