# Ec2 -\> ebs -\> s3?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 14, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787 "2009-08-14T19:38:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/f07891/32.png) [@bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bill_walton)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787/1 "2009-08-14T19:38:12Z")

</div>

Greetings!

I’d appreciate hearing from anybody who’s had experience with any of  
this. I’ve got a Rails app that currently deployed on EC2 with MySQL  
and am readying to move from a dev / prototype model to a full-scale  
production model. Right now I’ve got a single MySQL instance. I’m  
getting ready to move that to a master-slave setup. I’m also planning  
to use EBS volumes for the MySQL storage with snapshots saved to S3 for  
backup. Would love to hear from anybody who’s done any of this  
before.

Also, I’ve been reading the stuff from Rightscale and they really seem  
to know what they’re doing. Anybody got any experience using their  
services?

Thanks,  
Bill

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/f07891/32.png) [@bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bill_walton)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 8:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787/2 "2009-08-14T20:26:11Z")

</div>

Forgot to mention…

The database growth plan is to use sharding rather than clustering. So  
any experience with software ‘load-balancing’ front-ends that direct to  
an app instance based on subdomain rather than / in addition to  
availability would be very helpful.

Thanks again,  
Bill

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/f07891/32.png) [@bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bill_walton)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 9:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787/3 "2009-08-14T21:08:21Z")

</div>

Not trying to offend you, really. But how about getting big before  
planning  
sharding ? You can get really big with just tweaking mysql on a 4 core  
server and then you can have loads of memory and eventually you can keep  
everything in memory. Then you can cache the site, and then you can put  
varnish cache in front. I work on a site with more than 1.5 million  
individuals visiting each and every day, not distributed evenly, and for  
the  
most part it is a single mysql server, single web server and varnish  
cache.  
This setup replaced 14 squid servers that used to be in front.  
(We actually have everything with fail over and more setup, but mostly  
to  
keep things simpler). With the setup we have, we can grow a lot bigger  
before we need to increase anything.

Trausti

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/f07891/32.png) [@bill\_walton](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bill_walton)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ec2-ebs-s3/173787/4 "2009-08-14T21:32:55Z")

</div>

Hi Trausti,

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 21:06 +0200, Trausti Thor J. wrote:

> Not trying to offend you, really.

No offense taken, Trausti. Really.

> But how about getting big before planning sharding ?

Agreed, at least as far as ‘we won’t need to do it for a good long  
while.’ I was just saying that sharding rather than clustering is the  
eventual path we’ll take. Much of that decision is based on another  
decision: deploying on EC2.

> You can get really big with just tweaking mysql on a 4 core server and  
> then you can have loads of memory and eventually you can keep  
> everything in memory. Then you can cache the site, and then you can  
> put varnish cache in front. I work on a site with more than 1.5  
> million individuals visiting each and every day, not distributed  
> evenly, and for the most part it is a single mysql server, single web  
> server and varnish cache. This setup replaced 14 squid servers that  
> used to be in front.

Understood. And thanks for the numbers. I’ve got a lot more  
investigating / benchmarking to do before I know what our ‘break point’  
will be. Most of the usage of the site I’m working on now will be  
updates rather than reads. I know that MySQL is optimized for reads,  
and there’s lots of numbers out there for that but I haven’t seen as as  
much about the update side of the performance.

> (We actually have everything with fail over and more setup, but mostly  
> to keep things simpler). With the setup we have, we can grow a lot  
> bigger before we need to increase anything.

Thanks much for your reply. I appreciate it!

Bill