John,

<< The EC2 Service is still in somewhat limited beta. One has to wonder if
they might not add persistent ("normal") storage at some future point, along
with some other important features such as fixed IP addresses... >>

Frankly, the whole thing sounds like a serious exercise in re-inventing the
wheel.  I can't see the benefit to anyone that they wouldn't already get
with an existing provider, and the lack of persistent storage is a
non-starter.  I doubt if it would be worth your time or my time to work
around what appears to be a systems architecture issue (to me at least .

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

OK. Thanks. And just to be clear, I didn't ever consider that *either*
of us should have to _work_ around the architecture issue. I was just
wondering how feasible it would be to use EDB as is, or "as planned,"
probably by kicking off backup sequences every so often. The only
additional work I'd have considered was (minimal) in designing the
structure of the applications running on those VMs. (And I was hoping
to keep certain client's applications wholly isolated without hitting
other servers... Using these VMs as front ends to real DB servers
should work just fine.)

Thanks again.

Tim & John,

Hope you don't mind me jumping in this thread, but almost a year has past and I was just
reading about Elastra and had the same question. Elastra is supporting MySQL,
EnterpriseDB, or PostgreSQL databases and is claiming performance "near those of a local
database deployed using local storage." (http://www.elastra.com/)

There seems to be some amazing activity in this arena, and I'm trying to plan some
solutions a year or two from now. Do you have any updates to your last postings?

Thanks,
Sedge

Sedge,

<< Hope you don't mind me jumping in this thread, but almost a year has past
and I was just reading about Elastra and had the same question. Elastra is
supporting MySQL, EnterpriseDB, or PostgreSQL databases and is claiming
performance "near those of a local database deployed using local storage."
(http://www.elastra.com/)

There seems to be some amazing activity in this arena, and I'm trying to
plan some solutions a year or two from now. Do you have any updates to your
last postings? >>

Not really.  My guess would be that as easy as their documentation makes it
seem, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com