Our Cloud Computing Roundtable just saw the launch of FathomDB, a new Y Combinator startup that offers database administration as a service. The startup manages many of the tasks that database administrators typically have to deal with, like database backups, monitoring, and launching replacement servers in the event of a crash. The service is primarily operating with MySQL databases hosted on Amazon’s EC2, but will expand to support other cloud-based computing services as they become available. And because it uses industry-standard systems, developers won’t have to modify their code to make it work with FathomDB, and they aren’t locked into the service.
Aside from routine maintenance tasks, FathomDB also offers an array of analytics tools that help developers track the status of their servers and identify where their performance bottlenecks are. CEO Justin Santa Barbara says that the system isn’t necessarily meant to actually replace database administrators, but instead to take care of low-level tasks so that they can focus on more complex and important issues.
Final pricing for the service is still being determined, but the company plans to charge a small (~10-20%) markup over standard EC2 prices.
Disclosure: FathomDB is a sponsor for today’s Roundtable event.
CPanel for EC2! Hmm.. not a bad idea.
Totally agree…my company was looking for something similar… although this does not seem to be new.
Do they provide support for mobile DB services too??
http://www.livbit.com
agree also
freefreebiefinder.com/
And so, it has come to this.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you were wondering whether TC is financially struggling, the answer is a gigantic YES!
How do I know this? Because you are reading another crappy Ycombinator PR news release signifying absolutely nothing newsworthy whatsoever, yet covered by TC in a most shilling manner.
Why are you reading this? Because Ycombinator is in all likelihood providing some sort of “remuneration” (money, goods or services, or most likely credits to Arrington) in exchange for the coverage.
So incredibly small town. So obvious. So shortsighted.
So ultimately Ycombinator.
Best of luck to all those that put in all the hard work and man hours to get it going.. maybe when they get their pricings up it’ll make sense in the sense that they’re undercutting my provider.. actually now that i think of it, if i pay my Shell host by bandwidth, it would require my host to download the sql results from this service, and then serve it to the end user.
http://www.kisalt.net/hs
“i can run arbitrary queries, even ones that join multiple tables”
clearly i am not in the target market for this product.
no shit… maybe first graders are the target market.
try getting a job without knowing how to write a simple join statement.
Dude, I hope you are one hell of a coder because you’re certainly not going to get by on your sterling personality. Oh, wait, I bet your an “entrepreneur,” right? You’ve thrown off all the social mores associated with working for The Man because you’re above all the sheep and you can speak what you really feel unlike the rest of the masses.
Maybe the dude was a fucking marketing guy? I hear they still visit TC from time to time. I’ve also heard that they can occasionally land a job without knowing how to write a simple join statement.
are you a child, can’t even call me an asshole? We ned to shoot people like you and make america better. no games, no bs. just guns and butter.
dope? I can make pie charts out of my database queries? I’m not one to arbitrarily write negative tech crunch comments, it just seems like a weird middle ground between a synthasite esque handle everything for you and acting as an actual hosting provider. Like if i want to make a website, I need my own shell service w/ a XA_P host, and then use this as a MySQL server, just seems like an awkward market placement.
Best of luck to all those that put in all the hard work and man hours to get it going.. maybe when they get their pricings up it’ll make sense in the sense that they’re undercutting my provider.. actually now that i think of it, if i pay my Shell host by bandwidth, it would require my host to download the sql results from this service, and then serve it to the end user.
I wish them good luck because I’m not impressed. If they offer perhaps something similar like Mosso or Google App Engine on top of Amazon EC2, then I might have a look again.
SaaS is no longer sexy enough. It has officially been renamed to the Cloud.
Does seem like a skimpy service – little value-add or new.
Handling the DB and having good backups is the largest pain in the a** when dealing with EC2. Its a pain to configure and usually means you have to run multiple instances so you can keep a slave.
Having a DB on EC2 also requires you to run a large instance if you want MySQL running on more than 1GB of memory.
This is a great solution. Good work Justin.
why would you use Ec2 if it’s a problem to begin with; and u RAID the db so you never have to back it up; just hot-swap disk on a daily basis.
delete from customers;
*oops* good thing it’s backed up to raid. Oh wait….
retard…. you never actually delete in a database. you mark it for delete.
you’re just stupid and have never worked in production.
great to have a lot of the burden managed. But how about a new paradigm where the database is purely a service accessible directly from the web client? That’s the Nextdb.net is about.
Too bad they weren’t around a month ago for http://ma.gnolia.com/ . Maybe that site could still be around now.
Congrats to Justin for launching this sucker!!
Shilling for handjobs aint journalism.
But it sure seems to be part of the Ycombinator business model.
My company has been using Fathomdb as a trial customer and the service is absolutely fantastic. It cut our development time in half and has been hassle free ever since.
The guy who presented this at the round table was completely awful.
Please elaborate
total piece of shit; duh…1st, why would anyone/company have a hosted db unless they were a ‘tard service which never makes money.
2. how about free tools such as MySQLBrowser or MySQLAdministrator, or TOAD for christ sakes.
professionals would never use this.
it’s stupid.
I kicked the tires and, you are truely a lemon.
I can see the benefits of this service. It seems to make sense. I think the highlights could be:
1) You don’t have to worry about backups. Giving you peace of mind. That’s also time you save not having to create a system or script to do it.
2) The thought of scaling your database is not a burden. You easily grow as you need to and they take care of that cruft associated. Unless you enjoy setting up clusters and such (then stay away).
3) Wherever or whoever you host your app with – you have access to your database. So if I don’t like Linode you can switch to EC2 or whatever and your database and connections remain the same.
I think the admin tool is a nice to have, but it doesn’t sell the service.
Also, I think I would like to see a bit more detail on HOW the backups and scaling are being done. Maybe have a version of this presentation for more savvy people.
This includes explanation of scaling. The presentation mentioned scaling “up to 256 times bigger”. That is a bit vague. 256 times bigger than what?
As a DBA I see this as something that I will have to end up supporting after the dev who got mgmt to buy off on it is long gone, and we realize that the company is paying for something that we could have done and supported in-house with our existing infrastructure.
It’s great idea for companies who don’t have DBA’s, and dev’s are given Carte blanche to create servers in prod without concern for growth controls, though.
This is just a frontend to Mysql. Not impressed.
Cloud computing/storage is way too premature an unstable.
I predict startups that offer/rely (Amazon is not a startup) on Cloud computing will be out of business in 2 years.
I say, lets revisit this cloud thing in 2015.
Databases as a Service eh
I tend to agree with @RBS on this.
Running MySQL in EC2 requires using either the Elastic Block Store (EBS) or having sufficient slaves to survive the failure of one or more EC2 virtual machines.
Unfortunately their pricing model is pay as you go… that is not going to work for databases, they will need to be up 24×7.
Are your queries going to wait 5 mins whilst an EC2 instance fires up?
EC2 is better used as peak demand or on demand computing, for 24×7 use a dedicated hosting service.
So name dropping EC2 is pure hype, running a database as a service would be cheaper run off dedicating hosting or dedicated hardware, plus the issues with impermanent storage disappear.
Have Fun
PHPMyAdmin + mytop + nagios
big frickin whoop. good luck with that.
Not extremely innovative but I can see a few markets/businesses that might opt for this. The admin service is nice for some people but I wonder if anyone will buy it just for that. As long as we are still getting ma.gnolia type stories coming out I’ll be checking This site for digital security info.
That’s the type of work that lots of small businesses love to offload. Best of luck to them.
actually now that i think of it, if i pay my Shell host by bandwidth, it would require my host to download the sql results from this service, and then serve it to the end user.
So name dropping EC2 is pure hype, running a database as a service would be cheaper run off dedicating hosting or dedicated hardware, plus the issues with impermanent storage disappear