stuartrobb
asked on
Applications in the Cloud
We have a proprietary .net (C) application that we run on our local servers to manage our databases. It utilises as much CPU and, most importantly, lots of disk IO when processing. The software is designed to manage very large databases by turning the data into bitmaps so that we can run fast counts and selections on the data (millions of records at a time).
I love the idea of Amazon EC2 but this and others appear to be designed for web applications and SQL databases. Our product is designed to run on a local machine but I would love to be able to scale it within a virtual environment so that when we are doing heavy processing we can spin-up 20-30 servers and when want we can just use one.
I am not a developer but have a basic understanding of tech and so please forgive if this is oversimplistic.
Effectively, I want to run our application as normal on a server or virtual server but be able to scale up really quickly as and when.
If this is an unrealistic request, I would welcome alternative solutions.
Please feel free to ask questions - I can ask our software guys for responses if necessary.
Thanks!
Stuart
I love the idea of Amazon EC2 but this and others appear to be designed for web applications and SQL databases. Our product is designed to run on a local machine but I would love to be able to scale it within a virtual environment so that when we are doing heavy processing we can spin-up 20-30 servers and when want we can just use one.
I am not a developer but have a basic understanding of tech and so please forgive if this is oversimplistic.
Effectively, I want to run our application as normal on a server or virtual server but be able to scale up really quickly as and when.
If this is an unrealistic request, I would welcome alternative solutions.
Please feel free to ask questions - I can ask our software guys for responses if necessary.
Thanks!
Stuart
> "I love the idea of Amazon EC2 but this and others appear to be designed for web applications and SQL databases"
Who told you that? It is true that the most obvious use case is a scalable web site but it is not the only one.
In fact, Amazon EC2 is just as suitable for heavy computing needs, see here http://aws.amazon.com/hpc-applications/
From the information you provided I think that EC2 is just fine for you and so are some (not all) of the infrastructure cloud providers.
If your application is only a local one for internal use, you may need to either spin up a private cloud or a hybrid like Amazon VPC
Who told you that? It is true that the most obvious use case is a scalable web site but it is not the only one.
In fact, Amazon EC2 is just as suitable for heavy computing needs, see here http://aws.amazon.com/hpc-applications/
From the information you provided I think that EC2 is just fine for you and so are some (not all) of the infrastructure cloud providers.
If your application is only a local one for internal use, you may need to either spin up a private cloud or a hybrid like Amazon VPC
ASKER
Hi Shalomc,
Great answer, thank you.
With VPC do we end up with what looks and feels like a normals windows server operating system but with greater speed than a single machine - excuse my high level and non-tech view on this!
Thanks
Stuart
Great answer, thank you.
With VPC do we end up with what looks and feels like a normals windows server operating system but with greater speed than a single machine - excuse my high level and non-tech view on this!
Thanks
Stuart
If you run your own 64 bit superdome it will be faster than any virtual machine, because speed is relative to cost.
However, with VPC you have access to a virtually unlimited number of both low end and high end servers, and it feels like it is part of your datacenter.
However, with VPC you have access to a virtually unlimited number of both low end and high end servers, and it feels like it is part of your datacenter.
ASKER
Thanks for the comments - I'll review the superdome too.
Can I ask, would our software require rewriting to allow it to make real use of the multiple machine environment?
Can I ask, would our software require rewriting to allow it to make real use of the multiple machine environment?
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ASKER
Super help, thanks!
Thanks,
Kent