Quote:
Originally Posted by tol120
How do database servers work in the cloud?
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Short answer, just like they do on a VPS, Dedicated or shared host. ;)
Usually what cloud servers allow for related to db's is the ability to change the resources allocated to a db server by simply rebooting. Something like RDS on Amazon will manage the db server and all you need to do is adjust your instance sizing to your needs.
Some of the managed solutions allow for easy additions of slaves to a master but they don't handle scaling your code regards to read/write splitting. You'll need to either rewrite your code to take advantage of your additional servers or use something like MySQL proxy to split your queries. The DB is still one of the hardest parts of scaling a web app. Depending on where the bottlenecks are in your code, this may or may not be a problem.
One of the biggest advantages to cloud servers is the ability to change your resource utilization to match your needs and free you of server maintenance if it's managed.