Should we use RDS or Xeround?

Question

We use Amazon S3 and CDN. Our app runs on Heroku. We are thinking of using a DBaaS like RDS or Xeround.

Because we are already using S3 and CDN from Amazon, should we use RDS? Since all technologies are running on the same host (Amazon), will there be any performance gain, rather than using something that is of third-party (Xeround)?

Or it shouldn't matter?

Answer 1

I work for Xeround and wanted to outline the key differentiators between our database service and Amazon's RDS.

Contrary to common perception, Amazon RDS is not a truly elastic cloud database service, but an implementation of MySQL on EC2. Xeround on the other hand is a native cloud database that's extremely easy to use- taking the pain out of scaling and maintaining high-availability for your MySQL in the cloud.

Key Differentiators Between Xeround and Amazon RDS:

1) Xeround supports unlimited Auto-Scaling up/out & down/in with no service downtime or any code changes or architectural changes to your application. This industry-first capability is in contrast to Amazon's manual scaling with down time. We automatically add nodes or storage to your DB when the application demands it, and shrink it back down when the database is underutilized- so you only pay for what you use. you don't need to figure out what's your current usage and what growth you're planning for- the DB resources would automatically adjust to meet your needs at any given time.

2) Xeround never fails – even when Amazon’s instance fails. (BTW- in the latest EC2 outage- when RDS customers had as much as 14 hours of downtime, Xeround's databases on the same data centers continued to work as if nothing had happened- you can read more about the outage on our blog).

Xeround offers a highly available, self-healing, database, with no downtime guarantee. Most importantly- you don't need to be bothered with replicas, distribution etc. to ensure HA- it's built-in to the service.

3) Xeround offers TRUE pay-per-use model, vs. RDS which requires you to commit to an instance-size with preset processing power and storage. This often results in over subscription and over-paying as you prepare for a peak. We are finalizing our pricing these days- it'll be based on two metrics: data size and data transfer - so that your costs are tightly linked to the performance and demand of your application, with auto-scaling, availability SLAs, scheduled backup and 24/7/365 support all included.

You can see the detailed comparison to Amazon RDS, as well as our RDS performance benchmark comparison showing that Xeround performs much better than RDS particularly as the number of concurrent users grows (we'll soon publish an update to the benchmark with even better results).

Regarding latency: note that Xeround is deployed on Amazon EC2 in US-East and in EU-West- so if you app runs on the same datacenter latency should be minimal.

In addition, we're also have an Heroku add-on that you can easily add to your app (DB would also be deployed on EC2-US-East).

hope this helps.

Answer 2

Be aware that Xeround DOES NOT support foreign Key constraints (and they don't make it clear). So if your application depends on this database feature to keep you data consistent, don't use Xeround.

http://xeround.com/developers/release-notes/

"Foreign Key constraints are supported but not enforced"

Answer 3

This is a hard topic. I faced the very same question 2 months ago.

1. Amazon RDS

Pros: it's Amazon thus well known, mature and reliable

Cons: They faced many downtimes at the beginning of the year + some people complain about the slowness of the service (claiming it's faster to run a MySql db on EC2)

1. Xeround

Pros: I still don't know but it's good looking :)

Cons: Still in early stage, no price displayed (Am I missing something?)

Answer 4

Since Xeround announced today that they are pulling the plug on their DBaaS, the choice is now more obvious

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/01/xeround-pulls-the-plug-on-free-cloud-database-option/