Amazon RDS News - Oracle Data Pump

The Amazon RDS team is rolling out new features at a very rapid clip.

The most awaited feature - Oracle Data Pump is finally here.

Extract from blog post by Jeff:
Customers have asked us to make it easier to import their existing databases into Amazon RDS. We are making it easy for you to move data on and off of the DB Instances by using Oracle Data Pump. A number of scenarios are supported including:

• Transfer between an on-premises Oracle database and an RDS DB Instance.
• Transfer between an Oracle database running on an EC2 instance and an RDS DB Instance.
• Transfer between two RDS DB Instances.

These transfers can be run in either direction. We currently support the network mode of Data Pump where the job source is an Oracle database. Transfers using Data Pump should be considerably faster than those using the original Import and Export utilities. Oracle Data Pump is available on all new DB Instances running Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.v5. To use Data Pump with your existing v3 and v4 instances, please upgrade to v5 by following the directions in the RDS User Guide. To learn more about importing and exporting data from your Oracle databases, check out our new import/export guide.

For those who are not aware what Oracle Data Pump is -

Oracle Data Pump is a feature of Oracle Database 11g Release 2 that enables very fast bulk data and metadata movement between Oracle databases. Oracle Data Pump provides new high-speed, parallel Export and Import utilities (expdp and impdp) as well as a Web-based Oracle Enterprise Manager interface.

• Data Pump Export and Import utilities are typically much faster than the original Export and Import Utilities. A single thread of Data Pump Export is about twice as fast as original Export, while Data Pump Import is 15-45 times fast than original Import.
• Data Pump jobs can be restarted without loss of data, whether or not the stoppage was voluntary or involuntary.
• Data Pump jobs support fine-grained object selection. Virtually any type of object can be included or excluded in a Data Pump job.
• Data Pump supports the ability to load one instance directly from another (network import) and unload a remote instance (network export).

Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace

Superbly detailed blog Post by Jeff on Amazon EC2 Reserved Instance Marketplace

No more words need to be added....

EC2 Options

I often tell people that cloud computing is equal parts technology and business model. Amazon EC2 is a good example of this; you have three options to choose from:

• You can use On-Demand Instances, where you pay for compute capacity by the hour, with no upfront fees or long-term commitments. On-Demand instances are recommended for situations where you don't know how much (if any) compute capacity you will need at a given time.
  
• If you know that you will need a certain amount of capacity, you can buy an EC2 Reserved Instance. You make a low, one-time upfront payment, reserve it for a one or three year term, and pay a significantly lower hourly rate. You can choose between Light Utilization, Medium Utilization, and Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances to further align your costs with your usage.
  
• You can also bid for unused EC2 capacity on the Spot Market with a maximum hourly price you are willing to pay for a particular instance type in the Region and Availability Zone of your choice. When the current Spot Price for the desired instance type is at or below the price you set, your application will run.

Reserved Instance Marketplace

Today we are increasing the flexibility of the EC2 Reserved Instance model even more with the introduction of the Reserved Instance Marketplace. If you have excess capacity, you can list it on the marketplace and sell it to someone who needs additional capacity. If you need additional capacity, you can compare the upfront prices and durations of Reserved Instances on the marketplace to the upfront prices of one and three year Reserved Instances available directly from AWS. The Reserved Instances in the Marketplace are functionally identical to other Reserved Instances and have the then-current hourly rates, they will just have less than a full term and a different upfront price.

AWS Expands in Japan

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is expanding in Japan with the addition of a third Availability Zone.
The move means that AWS will most likely be adding more data centers to keep up with the steady demand in service it has had since it first began offering its service in Tokyo 18 months ago.

For people who are not aware of Availability zones and Regions of AWS -

Amazon Web Services serves hundreds of thousands of customers in more than 190 countries.
Currently, AWS has spanned across 8 regions around the Globe.
Each region has multiple availability zones.
Each availability zone can encompass multiple data centers.

See a detailed list of offerings at all AWS locations

Extracted below a nice blog post by Jeff:

We announced an AWS Region in Tokyo about 18 months ago. In the time since the launch, our customers have launched all sorts of interesting applications and businesses there. Here are a few examples:

• Cookpad.com is the top recipe site in Japan. They are hosted entirely on AWS, and handle more than 15 million users per month.
• KAO is one of Japan's largest manufacturers of cosmetics and toiletries. They recently migrated their corporate site to the AWS cloud.
• Fukoka City launched the Kawaii Ward project to promote tourism to the virtual city. After a member of the popular Japanese idol group AKB48 raised awareness of this site, virtual residents flocked to the site to sign up for an email newsletter. They expected 10,000 registrations in the first week and were pleasantly surprised to receive over 20,000.

Demand for AWS resources in Japan has been strong and steady, and we've been expanding the region accordingly. You might find it interesting to know that an AWS region can be expanded in two different ways. First, we can add additional capacity to an existing Availability Zone, spanning multiple datacenters if necessary. Second, we can create an entirely new Availability Zone.

Over time, as we combine both of these approaches, a single AWS region can grow to encompass many datacenters. For example, the US East (Northern Virginia) region currently occupies more than ten datacenters structured as multiple Availability Zones.

 

 

Today, we are expanding the Tokyo region with the addition of a third Availability Zone. 

This will add capacity and will also provide you with additional flexibility. As is always the case with AWS, untargeted launches of EC2 instances will now make use of this zone with no changes to existing applications or configurations. If you are currently targeting specific Availability Zones, please make sure that your code can handle this new option.

 
For more references: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/13/amazon-web-services-expands-in-japan/

Infographic : Understanding Hybrid Cloud Computing

The term “hybrid” can hold a different meaning from industry to industry. Generally speaking, it describes the combination of two things to make one. In the cloud computing industry, there are a series of technologies you can use to run your web environments, from cloud to dedicated.

Users can have a hybrid environment at Rackspace by connecting Cloud Servers and dedicated servers via RackConnect™. Here is a fun illustration that highlights this technology in the simplest of terms.


Hybrid Hosting
 

This illustration is meant to be a general explanation of what “hybrid” means in the cloud computing world. With the Rackspace solution, RackConnect, you do in fact need a firewall to connect dedicated and cloud servers. The data transferred between the two can be done over a private network.
A better explanation can be seen here:
http://www.rackspace.com/hosting_solutions/hybrid_hosting/

SOURCE