Rethinking Cost and Performance of Database Systems David Redding 4/6/11

Introduction Why I picked this article What users want Factors in building a Web Application Old Database Architecture New Proposed Database Architecture Available Services 

Why I picked this article Internship with T. Rowe Price Storage Team Learned about cost and optimizations being done on the hardware side Managing disk arrays and various storage devices

What users want Zero Cost Zero response time Infinite throughput Infinite scalability Users supported Number of Machines added 100% predictability Cost Performance Availability for read and write Flexibility

Factors in building a database Cost No longer a one-time purchase More hardware = More pay & Performance Performance Faster is better Sustain a particular peak workload Scalability Step function Predictability Cost  Consistency Flexibility

Old Database Architecture "Given a set of hardware resources and guaranteeing full data consistency, minimize the response time of requests and maximize the throughput of requests"  

New Proposed Database Architecture "Given performance requirements of an application (peak throughput; maximum tolerable response times), minimize the required hardware resources and maximize the data consistency"  

Available Services Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Simple Storage Service Sausalito

Extra sources http://aws.amazon.com/ http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ http://www.28msec.com