Taken from the FathomDB website, a screenshot showing the product's deployment tool in operation.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The Rackspace Cloud (www.rackspacecloud.com), the cloud hosting division of Rackspace Hosting (www.rackspace.com) announced on Thursday that it has partnered with FathomDB (www.fathomdb.com), which it calls a pioneer in the realm of database as a service technology, to create a version of FathomDB’s cloud database offering using Rackspace’s cloud hosting solutions.
Rackspace says FathomDB helped to launch the database as a service business by creating a user interface and analytics engine that support MySQL databases in the cloud, initially powered by Amazon’s EC2 and S3 cloud products, but now also using Rackspace’s Cloud Servers product.
Rackspace says that, built on the Rackspace Cloud’s API, the new FathomDB offering will provide “a seamless database management experience” using Rackspace’s Cloud Servers and simplifying administration tasks. The FathomDB offering handles a long list of database tasks that includes automated backup and routine maintenance, analytics tools, real-time monitoring and performance reporting and simple configuration tools.
The release describes FathomDB as a “strategic partner,” rather than simply as a customer, which would suggest that the relationship goes a little deeper than just an application optimized to work with Rackspace’s cloud API. At least part of that relationship appears to be the inclusion of the solution within Rackspace’s “cloud tools” ecosystem.
The development of cloud-based database solutions is an interesting subject in general. Because the database has been considered one of the trickier things to pull off in the cloud – partly because of the unpredictability of things like i/o volume – the emergence of database solutions built on the cloud has been watched closely. Micrsoft’s Azure cloud has a SQL function, and Amazon launched a MySQL database solution – its Amazon RDS product – in October.
“Ensuring that our cloud is reliable and scalable, and delivering a fanatical support experience to our customers and partners are primary objectives for us,” said Rackspace Cloud general manager Emil Sayegh, quoted in the press release. “We support strategic partnerships because they extend the power of our cloud offerings. By working together with FathomDB, as well as the Cassandra open source project, we are simplifying the challenging nature of scaling databases in the cloud. It is through transparent relationships like these that we can solve many customer needs; meanwhile our competitors are trying to solve these problems alone.”
Customers of the Rackspace Cloud can create databases on the Rackspace Cloud using FathomDB starting at $0.02 per hour. The product is available from the FathomDB website, which also includes a more detailed examination of the product.
