Amazon Web Services boosts database cloud computing
A branch of Amazon.com, Amazon Web Services, has announced new features for customers using high performance databases through cloud computing.
With the launch of Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Provisioned IOPS (input/output operations per second), the new EBS volume type is designed to improve the manageability of I/O intensive tasks.
Consistent, reliable volumes that can deliver rapid response times are crucial for a number of database-driven tasks -- especially in the wake of cloud computing --and Amazon's Provisioned IOPS aims to fill this crucial role in the market.
The Provisioned IOPS EBS volume type allows customers to specify volume size and volume performance. The volumes have also been designed to allow customers to test, develop and deploy their applications with specific performance levels -- through the management console, EBS volumes can be provisioned with required storage and IOPS before being attached to their Amazon EC2 instance.
Amazon EBS currently supports up to 1,000 IOPS per volume, although higher limits are in the pipeline.
Multiple EBS volumes can be added to a single EC2 instance. Customers can now also launch selected Amazon EC2 instance types as EBS-optimized instances -- with output options of between 500 Mbit/s to 1,000 Megabits per second.
Jeremy Przygode, CEO at Stratalux, a cloud solutions firm, said:
"A common request we see from both our large and small customers is the need to support high performance database applications. Throughput consistency is critical for these workloads. Based on positive results in our early testing, the combination of EBS Provisioned IOPS and EBS-Optimized instances will enable our customers to consistently scale their database applications to thousands of IOPS, enabling us to increase the number of I/O intensive workloads we support."
High-performance and reliability are not only a concern for the enterprise; it is also necessary for research programs, large-scale database deployment and scientific project. Amazon EBS is currently in use at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the new EBS Provisioned IOPS capability was prototyped to cope with the laboratory's computing and cloud demands.
The Amazon EBS Provisioned IOPS volumes are currently available in specific areas; including Virginia, California, Oregon, Ireland, Singapore and Japan. Additional region launches are planned in the coming months.
Amazon Web Services currently operates in 190 countries, and provides an infrastructure platform in the cloud aimed at enterprise, government and start-ups.