Amazon extended its Web services offering today with an on-demand relational database service that provides the equivalent of a MySQL database:
[The relational database service] makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you up to focus on your applications and business.
Amazon RDS gives you access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your database, storing the backups for a user-defined retention period. You also benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with your relational database instance via a single API call. As with all Amazon Web Services, there are no up-front investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use.
An interesting feature of the relational database service is automated backups:
Amazon RDS will automatically back up your database during your predefined backup window. For typical workloads, this allows you to restore to any point in time within your retention period, up to the last five minutes. You can also restore from a DB Snapshot, a user-initiated backup that can be run at any time with a simple API call.
The service is priced per hour used, based on the size of the database, as well as database storage requirements.
What do you think of Amazon's relational database service?
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