Thought on AWS's Fast I/O Instance

A while back I wrote a blog on how to use Delphix in AWS cloud. It was sort of a thought experiment, because the performance of EBS was too slow for serious database usage. However, with the release of Amazon's latest high performance EC2 SSD instance, things changed. Netflix had done their Cassandra benchmark with the new instance. They were able to use this instance to replace the m2.4xlarge instance with cache and cut about 60% of cost.

To me, the fast I/O EC2 instance now makes AWS very attractive to be used for data intensive analytics project. It also means you can really run databases in the cloud without relying on heavy (sometimes custom) caching*. I can hardly wait to see if I can use it in my future project.

*See the very interesting five-minute rule on how SSD improves the disk performance.

Bridging the Cloud with Delphix

For two years I worked at a wonderful startup called Delphix. Delphix is the leader in database virtualization and our technology allows customers to provision a database as easily as provisioning a VM. With Delphix, CIOs finally have the tool to provide the agility and cost saving their IT divisions have long enjoyed with server virtualization technology.

My focus had since shifted to cloud computing and other areas after Delphix. Recently, while reading about the AWS Storage Gateway announcement and the RDS support, I started ruminating on the Delphix's solution. Delphix has positioned its product as an enterprise/private cloud solution (because of the sensitivity of data, database is always the last thing an enterprise customer wants to move to the cloud). Can Delphix work with a public cloud such as Amazon AWS? Can it cross the chasm to enable DBaaS in a hybrid cloud environment? Most importantly, can it be done NOW?

The answer immediately appeared in my mind: using V2P*. With Delphix's V2P feature, a user can create an EC2 instance, attach an EBS volume, then run the Delphix V2P. With just a few clicks, a user then have a new database created, data loaded, in the cloud. The concept is illustrated in the following diagram**.

Fig 1. Use Delphix V2P to create a database instance in AWS.

The approach has several advantages over the AWS RDS approach. First, Delphix does all the bookkeeping, so the user can provision a new database to any time point without worrying about the backup schedules and how to find the right data set from the backup. Second, the whole operation is applied to the Delphix appliance only, so no load is applied to the production database (which the RDS export or dump approach requires). Third, the user gets a solution that works for both private and public cloud.

In short, cloud computing opens many new opportunities. How to bridge the gap between the private and public cloud is an interesting challenge for all solution providers. Delphix already has a strong starting with its current V2P offering. It will be really interesting to see what new features Delphix will provide to make the cloud transition even easier in the future.


* How did I know? Because the feature was implemented by yours truly.
** Thanks to my coworker Fred for contributing the diagram and validating the info.