SimpleDB

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon Web Services announced SimpleDB will be available for limited beta in a few weeks. I am pretty excited about this new service. There are already plenty of write ups about the possibilities of building apps with SimpleDB. What really excites me about SimpleDB is how well it fits with client side load balancing for web 2.0 applications, a recent article I wrote. I mentioned in the article that one of the advantages of client side load balancing is servers do not need to be geographically located in the same location. This is dependent on servers not requiring a local common database. Unfortunately for most applications, a database is a requirement. With the SimpleDB service, it is possible to have application servers located in different geographic locations. Assuming I am using S3 to distribute the client side application and using SimpleDB as the database, I can setup one application server in a datacenter on the east coast and another on the west coast. If saving money is the top priority, I can use shared hosting service instead of dedicated servers. Shared hosting service costs about $10 per month and if I sign up with 4 different companies, the monthly cost is about $40. While shared hosting services may not be as reliable, the chances of all four service failing is pretty unlikely. So for $40 a month plus S3 and SimpleDB cost, it is possible to build a web 2.0 application that is as reliable as Amazon’s S3 and SimpleDB service.