Running Your Database In The Cloud

If you thought running a database in the cloud was easy, think again. Databases in a cloud environment are inherently different from traditional installations in a datacenter or even in your trusted hosted environment.

There are four key considerations we believe every system architect should take into account when designing their database for the cloud. Today I’ll explain each of them, and why achieving those requirements in a cloud environment might be more complex, tedious and expensive than you think.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. A replicable, highly available setup: The cloud is an unstable, unpredictable environment, let alone without an SLA.
2. Database that scales elastically: This is scaling out as opposed to scaling up. The ability to add or remove nodes is harder on a cloud infrastructure.
3. Distributed databases: These require building the logic to handle multiple copies of the database while resolving data conflicts, as well as network and latency problems.
4. True Multi-tenancy: Multi-tenancy doesn’t simply mean a standard SQL database installed in multiple copies on the same virtual machine, which can cause more headaches and management overhead to keep running.

Today’s session will also review various potential database solutions. We’ve discovered that the best solution seems to be a SQL database with NoSQL capabilities. Amazon RDS is an example of a preconfigured MySQL DBaaS that targets developers and admins who are likely to shy away from manually configuring and running MySQL in the cloud. Other vendors offer alternate storage engines underneath and/or application sharing/middleware on top. In this session we will discuss these approaches and others that try to satisfy both ends of the spectrum such as scalable, hybrid DHT (distributed hash tables) and hybrid SQL/NoSQL solutions.