I found the CRN article describing Amazon’s adding their Relational Database Services to its Free Usage Tier. What I find interesting is that when AWS became a household name (OK, industry wide name) about two years ago, my first thought was that vendors like IBM, Oracle, JBoss, and Liferay ought to just add the db tier in AWS as a supported db. That would mean the architects could use that rather than spin up yet another machine image to act as a database. Alas, my aha moment was not one experienced by any of the major portal vendors………..although it’s not too late if anyone is reading this. You want to show support for cloud, then open up the db and make it easier to install a true cloud service.
Anyway, it’s obvious that Amazon isn’t sitting on its laurels as they continue to develop AWS.
Amazon said the service allows customers use of MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server or the Oracle database for a year for free.
The service can be used as a Micro DB Instance for up to 750 hours per month, with 20 GB of database capacity, 10 million I/Os and 20 GB of backup storage.
Biswaroop Palit, senior product manager for Amazon’s RDS, said in a video on the Amazon blog that the service is designed for websites that handle low traffic and testing.
Amazon’s Free Usage Tier is intended to help new AWS customers by allowing them to test applications as they ramp up cloud operations.
