Drupal Developer's Journal

Cloud Computing on Ulitzer

This time AWS has does it right. The Relational Database Servers in AWS called “RDS” are the “Real Thing”.

I just transferred over my whole Drupal DB in a few moments to an RDS Instance. Is was very simple.

Let me show you the one line command solution:

(Warning Linux command comes next!)

$ mysqldump –add-drop-table –databases Comments EdwardMGoldberg NOC myCloudWatcher_drupal wikidb | mysql -h mycloudwatcher.xxx.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com -u TheCloudWatcher -pXxXxXxXxXx4

(all password info is fake)

Let me break down this command into the parts:

mysqldump:

This is the LINUX command line database dump program. I just used the default connection (defined in my.cnf) and dumped a few tables I wanted. I added the drop table option so I can update as many time as I like.

mysql -h :

This does the “remote” connection to the new RDS instance and most of the heavy lifting.

So with a one line of shell script I moved into the Cloud.

The RightScale Dashboard was used to set up my RDS instance. It made the whole process of configuration a point and click process.

Next step, look at the results and check out the tables:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html

Down load these great GUI tools and connect to the Database from your Laptop. You do have to “allow” the IP address for you Laptop in the configuration.

It took me about one hour to get setup and transferred into the Cloud. Not Bad.

What’s next? Get my monitor system to track the DRS and alert me when issue happen. I like collectd for that task. So that will be my next step.

Take an hour and set up an RDS server for your database. It works great as a “Cold Backup Server”. You pay only a few cents for data storage on the “Cold RDS Server” stored as SNAP data. When you need to “Fail Over” in the Disaster Recovery (DR) mode just Launch the RDS from SNAP. In a very short amount of time you are back on line. To keep the DB up-to-date just launch it once a day for one hour and update the contents. Keep the “Delta” ready for the last few records you may need to add at Launch.

For DR and fail Over RDS ROCKS!!!!

It may be Beta for now, but start learning how to use this service in the Cloud and never be caught with no Database Server again.

When the Beta ends you will be ready to use RDS full time for you next project.

If you are in the process of learning SQL the RDS servers will provide you a real Database to do your homework with.