Exploring Databases in the Cloud

Expense reduction has been key to successfully surviving the economic downturn. Now, as business begins to improve, IT managers are faced with the need to upgrade facilities. But the uneven pace of recovery makes them hesitant to commit the capital required.

Cloud computing represents a cost-effective way to access the needed compute, storage, and software resources on a pay-per-usage basis and without the upfront capital expense associated with traditional computing.

Public cloud providers maintain data centers available for use by any business or individual. They can contain literally hundreds of thousands of servers and exabytes of data storage. Private clouds developed by large enterprises or government agencies provide virtualized compute and storage services for use within the organization.

The cloud also offers solutions to common data management challenges.

Database Solutions in the Cloud
The following database applications are particularly well-suited to the cloud.

• Applications that run only periodically and require a database such as for end-of-month processing or once-a-day batch jobs. Application and database servers for such periodic tasks can be launched and shut down on the cloud as needed. No usage charges are incurred when not in use.
  
  
• Applications involving database development and testing. In the past, it was necessary to dedicate hardware to these functions to avoid interfering with ongoing processing. Development and test systems remain idle much of the time. Moving these activities to the cloud eliminates the expense of purchasing and maintaining dedicated infrastructures for them.
  
  
• Applications with unpredictable or unknown utilization patterns. For some database workloads, the resource requirements may not be known up front or may be highly variable. Traditional IT management requires procuring enough hardware, storage, and database resources to meet the needs of peak loads. However, with cloud computing, the size of the database infrastructure can be dynamically scaled to meet peak demands and then shrunk just as easily when the need is reduced.
  
  
• Database backups and off-site disaster recovery. Costs for storing data on disk-based volumes and buckets on public clouds can often be as low as traditional tape-based solutions, while providing more efficient access to data. Furthermore, storing a copy in cloud-based storage is a much less expensive than renting and maintaining a distant offsite facility. Clouds also offer a cost effective solution for applications that require high availability. A live database mirror or a standby server can be configured on the cloud to provide uninterrupted processing for such applications, in case an organization's on-premise database server suffers an outage.
  
  

Database Choice Enhances Cloud Efficiency
IBM's DB2 database software offers an excellent database option for cloud environments. Its threaded-engine architecture minimizes memory requirements and makes efficient use of the multi-core processors used in virtualized systems on the cloud. Its many autonomic features such as Self Tuning Memory Manager (STMM) enhance performance and reduce administrative costs in resource-constrained cloud environments. DB2 comes with IBM supported drivers for development platforms such as Java, .Net, PHP, Perl, Ruby on Rails, etc. to simplify development of DB2-based applications.

IBM has further optimized DB2 for efficient operation with a wide variety of Linux versions and with popular hypervisors such as VMware, Xen and KVM so it can be easily deployed on both private and public clouds.

Organizations operating private clouds can license DB2 on a sub-capacity basis. The charge for the software is based only on the system capacity used. Some competing database products charge private cloud users for the full capacity of the hardware regardless of the fraction used. DB2 can also be licensed on a per-day basis so there is no need to purchase full licenses that would be used for only a few days in a year.

DB2 also offers public cloud users a wide variety of pricing options. The free community edition, DB2 Express-C, is available at no cost. Customers who have already purchased a DB2 license can use that license in the cloud at no additional cost. Customers who do not own a DB2 license, or prefer not to buy a perpetual license, can use pay-as-you-go pricing and be charged for only the time that DB2 is used.

Multiple DB2 deployment options are available. Both public and private cloud users can create DB2-based virtual machine images, but pre-built images can reduce the amount of time required to begin utilizing cloud service. For public cloud users, IBM and its cloud partners, such as Amazon, provide pre-built DB2 images on different operating systems. Third parties, such as Canonical provide DB2 images on Ubuntu. Private cloud users can download DB2 Express-C VMware images on Novell SUSE Linux or Ubuntu Linux.

Enterprise customers can use IBM's private and public clouds. Multiple environments are offered including DB2 images on Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. DB2 images for additional operating systems may be added in future. Both 32 and 64 bit Linux configurations are available. Also, the IBM WebSphere Cloudburst Appliance can "dispense" DB2 images for a variety of operating platforms and hypervisors.

Developing a Cloud Ecosystem Further Enhances Efficiency
IBM has worked with partners to enhance DB2 effectiveness in the cloud. Corent integrated its SaaS-Suite software with DB2 to support rapid development of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. Silanis uses DB2 to offer a digital signature service on the cloud. RightScale, Inc., a provider of cloud management and monitoring tools, offers a set of templates that enable users to create and clone a running DB2 deployment in minutes.

Ensuring Database Availability
DB2 offers a High Availability Disaster Recovery (HADR) facility that keeps two database servers in sync whether they reside in the same datacenter or located in different geographies. It continually updates the secondary database server as changes are made to the primary. In the event of a system or network failure, DB2 switches to the secondary server quickly without manual intervention. Application processing continues without interruption as client requests are automatically re-routed to the secondary server.

Summary
As organizations of all sizes begin to investigate and adopt cloud computing, IBM is situating DB2 to be the best option available to cloud-based applications that need to manage data. DB2 is efficient, reliable, and is used to manage data in both public and private cloud environments. It's also at the center of IBM's growing ecosystem of tools to help businesses make the most of the cloud.

IBM's DB2 provides the most options for organization that need to manage data in public and private cloud computing environments. It supports a number of development languages and hypervisors, for example, as well as flexible licensing options.

More Resources

• Video: DB2 on Amazon EC2 Quickstart
• Tutorial: Deploy Your Database Applications and Projects on the Cloud
• Run: DB2 9.7 on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
• Free eBook: Getting Started with DB2 Express-C