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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

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Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#181

Post by Sanddancer »

yumraj wrote: post #8

I've heard about PostgreSQL and know that HN community raves about it, but am currently using RDS with MySQL. Does it make sense to migrate to PostgreSQL, I don't have a lot of data as I'm in the early stage? What are the primary advantages that PostgreSQL provides over MySQL? Any advise/pointers is appreciated.

Hating to pile on, but doing so anyways, one of the overlooked things I'd argue is that postgresql tries much harder to let you do neat things with your data without much hassle. Needing to write a custom function to process data? Not only does PostgreSQL have support for PL/PgSQL, but it's made in a way that has let people write plugins to python, perl, v8, tcl, etc, so you can do that data transformation on the database instead of shipping it back and forth to another server with the latency that brings. The recent version also brings read/write support to redis, so you have have your updates trigger redis to store new values, etc. Plus, being that it's not controlled by Oracle, there's much less a feeling of the community being held back; MySQL feels very much like Oracle's tying one hand back, so that when you get to the size to need a "real" database, Oracle will gladly step in, at their standard consulting fees, of course.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#182

Post by adenot »

workhere-io wrote: post #97

Note that AWS' PostgreSQL offering is more expensive than its MySQL counterpart. http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

something wrong with the 'reserved' prices?

PostgreSQL RDS micro instance falls to $0.009 per hour when reserved, while MySQL falls to $0.016 per Hour.

If it isn't a typo, Postgres reserved instances are 1/5 of the on-demand price, which doesn't seem correct.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#183

Post by oceanplexian »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #143
ceejayoz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So's jQuery, but that hardly stops me from using it. Unsure as to the point you're trying to make.

For starters, the requirement of a third-party library introduces at least two problems: 1. An additional potential point of failure 2. The core software (a DB, in this case) can (and probably will) evolve independently of the third-party tool--thus introducing an additional layer of maintenance problems. I'd argue further--and this is of course just an opinion--that such a basic feature as this ought to be supported…

Percona and pt-online-schema-change is not just "some third-party library".

It's an industry-standard tool and one of the most respected forks of MySQL. It's not a layer of maintenance problems and they sell commercial support.

Their customers include the BBC, Yelp, and Cisco: http://www.percona.com/about-us/customers

Also, for the record, Oracle added online schema changes in 5.6.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#184

Post by oceanplexian »

Sssnake wrote: post #178
nerfhammer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't forget postgres didn't officially support replication until late 2010, which was a total non-starter for many/most production uses

That is absolutely ridiculous. Less than 1% of 1% of mysql users are using replication. Suggesting it is a "total non-starter" for most production uses is crazy.

You're kidding right?

I'd wager that a huge number of MySQL users are using replication. Running a single database in a production environment is totally unacceptable and a major business continuity problem.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#185

Post by oceanplexian »

falcolas wrote: post #94
cbsmith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is familiar with the rigamarole of PCI compliance, I respectfully disagree.

Disagree with what? Keeping your own backups? Probably not - if you're not keeping offsite backups, you're begging to go out of business. With needing a DBA, even if you're still on RDS? I don't see what that has to do with PCI compliance. With RDS only removing the up-front setup pain, at the cost of ongoing maintenance... as someone who is also familiar with PCI (and HIPPA, and DOD) compliance, I respectfully disag…

FYI RDS is no longer HIPAA compliant following the latest Omnibus legislation.

You need to be running dedicated instances inside of VPC with your own DB install.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#186

Post by oceanplexian »

zwily wrote: post #34
bmaeser wrote: post #31

this is awesome! still, i miss one essential feature - compared to mysql on aws and heroku/postgres: there is no replication for read replicas. yes, you can deploy a "hot standby" replica in another availability zone for failover, but you cant read from it.

You can be sure that that will come.

Probably not. Amazon has intentionally crippled external replication in MySQL for years now.

It's a form of vendor lock-in and you shouldn't support it.

Without replication it's impossible to migrate out of RDS without taking downtime (I've been through this and it was painful).

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#187

Post by gfodor »

adenot wrote: post #182
workhere-io wrote: post #97

Note that AWS' PostgreSQL offering is more expensive than its MySQL counterpart. http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

something wrong with the 'reserved' prices? PostgreSQL RDS micro instance falls to $0.009 per hour when reserved, while MySQL falls to $0.016 per Hour. If it isn't a typo, Postgres reserved instances are 1/5 of the on-demand price, which doesn't seem correct.

up-front price is largely different between the two. psql looks to be 50% cheaper when reserved for 3 years. weird

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#188

Post by Sanddancer »

smileysteve wrote: post #74
jes5199 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some engineers I worked with went and interviewed people at various San Francisco startups about their experiences with their databases. The MySQL startups tended to say "We love MySQL. We've gotten in the habit of taking an hour or two of downtime in the middle of the night every week to run all of our schema migrations, and we've had to build our process around that, but one we had it in place, everything's been fi…

Very important to note that MySQL 5.6 has ONLINE ALTER.

Looking through the documentation, though, it's even worse than just saying every alter is an offline alter. There are a few, but significant, schema changes that one could want to make -- like when dealing with a table that has full text search -- that need to be done offline; you have to tread real real lightly in dealing with online alters. I'd personally argue that online alter is not ready for prime time with 5.6; there are too many other things they need to do with the database engines to make it really useful.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#189

Post by ceejayoz »

Sssnake wrote: post #178
nerfhammer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't forget postgres didn't officially support replication until late 2010, which was a total non-starter for many/most production uses

That is absolutely ridiculous. Less than 1% of 1% of mysql users are using replication. Suggesting it is a "total non-starter" for most production uses is crazy.

> Less than 1% of 1% of mysql users are using replication.

If you count all the crappy shared hosts, XAMPP local installs, and hobbyists setting up their own little VPSes, perhaps.

Using a single, unreplicated database instance in production for anything serious is bizarre. Failed hardware is hardly unheard of.

Re: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

#190

Post by ceejayoz »

daniloassis wrote: post #145
ceejayoz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pt-online-schema-change from Percona addresses this particular point with MySQL nicely for us, incidentally. We use their Percona XtraDB Cluster fork and are quite happy.

I guess we are talking about RDS options though :)

Entirely possible to use pt-online-schema-change on an RDS instance. It's just running a bunch of SQL commands and is very happy to do them against a remote database like an RDS instance.
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