Hello,
I have rather big experience with AWS and can tell a few words about.
This is a convenient service if you plan to scale your app quickly, but
there are some problems that threaten the use of the service in production
systems. They are as follows.
1. Instances sometimes may be inaccessible due to network problems at the
Amazon.
2. Instance performance suddenly may slow down. This is quite
unpredictable and, probably, happens due to virtual nature of instances.
3. The backup of files and databases causes some problems. Instance may
"die" with data loss and there is no opportunity to recover. We had to
backup the desired data of the instance and upload the archive to a remote
storage server to recover the system state if needed. Sometimes Amazon sends
notification to you indicating that your instance with id=ID experiences a
problem and would be replaced soon. The notification also asks you to backup
data. More often the Amazon does not send any notification.
4. Amazon AWS agreement and EC2 SLA don't guarantee the efficient and
active support to the customer.
5. It takes significant time to prepare instance image, same or even more
as if you will tune the dedicated environment.
6. The price of EC2 hosting is almost the same as if you use the
dedicated hosting.
Again, you will set up your cloud (cluster) manually, setting all the
specifics regarding load balancing, DBs and other issues. Probably, It will
be better for you to rewrite the application using special cloud frameworks
for a particular platform or take a look to Terracotta or other
architetectural changes without changing the platform, but it is only you
who can decide on what really suits your needs.
Thank you.
-Yakov
2009/9/8 Aaron Porter <[email protected]>
> 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]
>
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