Amazon Web Services (AWS) Archives - Page 2 of 2

Production DBA

Cloud Alternatives to Microsoft SQL Server

April 16, 2013

When people say "cloud", they're simplifying a lot of different solutions into a single catchphrase. Let's break out the different options and compare them.
1. SQL Server in Amazon EC2 and Azure VMs
Amazon EC2 is a virtualization platform. Amazon buys servers, installs their secret sauce software, and rents you Windows virtual machines by the hour. Microsoft offers a similar product, Windows Azure Virtual Machines, that just went officially live.

Long Term Backup Storage With Amazon Glacier

November 20, 2012

A while back, Jes asked who's taking your backups. Making sure you have good backups is important. How much thought are you giving to handling historical backups? Right now, there's a really good chance that you're using a solution based on tape. While tape backups work, there's a better way. How Are You Archiving Backups Right…

Production DBA

Amazon Web Services Architect Training Recap

September 17, 2012

Going into Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture training last week, I expected to get whiteboard-level training for project planners, and it met expectations. We spent time talking about how Amazon's most popular services fit together and how they can be used to solve our business needs. Nothing in the training itself was groundbreaking for me - I keep…

Production DBA

Why I’m at Amazon Architect Training This Week

September 11, 2012

People bring me in when they're having data problems. They can't store data fast enough, they can't make it reliable enough, they can't hire people to manage it, etc. When I'm in the conference room, it's because there's a fire in the disco datacenter. You know how it is as a DBA, though - DBA…

Architecting with AWS – Course Overview

July 19, 2012

The Friday before class started I received an email from people running the Architecting with AWS training class about how to get to the class, what time class got started, a schedule of topics, and a link to prerequisites that I should go through before arriving at class on Monday morning. Most training classes I've…

Read more Be the first to comment

Architecting with AWS – Before You Go

July 17, 2012

Architecting with AWS is a three day training session held at the AWS offices in Seattle (classes are available in other locations). Both outsiders and AWS employees come together to learn about building scalable solutions on the AWS platform. This is a practical training program - there's no certification behind it. The Architecting with AWS training is an introduction to the products and services in AWS and how they can be used to create and automate great software.

Read more Be the first to comment

AlwaysOn Availability Groups in AWS Revisited

July 10, 2012

If you've ever wanted to use the cloud for a DR site, there's good news: as of this week you can use AlwaysOn Availability Groups and set up an asynchronous replica of your data into Amazon Web Services (AWS). If you're already in the cloud, or if you were holding off, this means that you…

SQL Server RDS

May 9, 2012

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a platform that offers a ton of services ranging from block storage, operating systems, to mail queues, DNS, and caching. When you say “cloud”, a lot of people think of AWS. AWS hosts a variety of businesses, large and small. Unfortunately, you still have to administer and configure your servers.…

SQL Server in EC2

September 13, 2011

The cloud is robust and reliable. The cloud solves all of our scaling needs. The cloud makes my poop smell like roses. While all of these statements are theoretically true it takes some effort to make them true in reality, especially when a database is involved. Who Is Deploying SQL Server in EC2? A question…

Amazon Web Services Explained

January 16, 2009

When I talk to database administrators, I hear a lot of questions like: What is Amazon S3? What is Mechanical Turk? How do these things matter to a real business? I've got a story I like to tell around how to use these services, but for a couple of years I've held back from posting…

Bad storage performance on Amazon EC2 Windows servers

November 5, 2008

This week I presented at the SSWUG Virtual Conference on how to benchmark your storage performance with Microsoft's SQLIO utility. Last week I talked about running SQL Server in the cloud on Amazon EC2. Take those two things together, and we've got storage benchmarking on Amazon EC2 servers:

Maximum write speed: 68 MBs/sec
Maximum read speed: 8 MBs/sec

Getting Started with Amazon EC2 SQL Server 2005

October 27, 2008

Sometimes you need an offsite database server in case something goes wrong, but you can't afford a full-blown disaster recovery datacenter. Or maybe you've got some ideas that you'd like to try out with a big SQL Server 2005 box, but you don't have the hardware sitting around idle. Or maybe you'd just like to…

Amazon EC2 Windows support now live!

October 23, 2008

You can now spin up a virtual server in Amazon's datacenter with Windows running.

Even better, you can spin up a fresh new SQL Server for around $1 per hour.

Read more Be the first to comment

Amazon EC2 will offer Windows hosting

October 1, 2008

A lot of cool things are happening at PDC this year, and Amazon's already showing their cards: Amazon EC2 will offer Windows hosting.

That means you can turn on a brand new Windows machine - or ten - and pay by the hour according to the capacity you're using. Less than a dollar an hour in most cases.

Read more Be the first to comment

Amazon’s new virtual computing system

August 24, 2006

Amazon just announced EC2, their rent-a-datacenter plan. You build a custom virtual machine using their tools, and upload it to them. Then you can turn on that virtual machine anytime you want for a whopping ten cents per hour.

It gets even better - if you have scalability needs, like if your site suddenly becomes hugely popular, then you can turn on more machines. You just get billed ten cents per hour per machine.

Read more Be the first to comment