Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) (beta)

[eluser]hcri50[/eluser]
Has anyone been successful in using Amazon (RDS) ?
I am in a bind for finding a solution for HIPAA security issues and solving it with Amazon RDS.

And is it possible to use CI with Amazon RDS??
Sincerely
robert

[eluser]theseamusjames[/eluser]
I just succeeded in doing this. Here's what I did to make it work:

1. I created an RDS DB, setting the security group to CIDR/IP. Instead of using the IP they suggest below that box, I went to whatsmyip.org and used what I saw there, putting "/32" on the end of it. ** THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT **
2. I downloaded a fresh phpMyAdmin and put it under /admin in my local web root folder (I run MAMP for a localhost).
3. I copied my config.inc.php file from my MAMP installation and edited it to include my RDS server address for $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host']. I set $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'http' and then set$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] and $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] respectively to the settings I made when I set up the DB.
4. I opened localhost:8888/admin and voila! There was my new RDS server.
5. I uploaded our existing database.
6. To integrate with CI, I changed my database config file to include my RDS host name, username, and pw.

BANG! It worked!!

Now, keep in mind that if you want to do this for your production server, you're going to need a static IP and you'll have to add a new security group that includes that IP address.

For us, the next step is to move to EC2 for hosting with the load balancer, and I believe all that will include is changing the security group to EC2 for the DB to work properly.

(All of this is because we've gotten too big! We had an epic crash two days ago that cost us a good chunk of money, hence the switchover)

[eluser]hcri50[/eluser]
thank you very much. I succeeded in making it work by installing my own mySQL to the EC2.
Simply because by doing so, I would not be charged for using Amazons RDS.

Got a question, what would security wise be if I went with Amazons RDS?????? Would it be more secure????
than trying to upload my own mySQL to the EC2?

This is the part that I am not sure of. Clearification would be nice.

thank you again
robert

[eluser]theseamusjames[/eluser]
When our site crashed the other day, we had a consultant come in and give us some direction. He explained it like this:

When you're getting a lot of traffic, two things are affect the processing power. First, each apache request - be it for the page, the css, the js, the images, whatever - impacts load. Second, the requests from the DB affect load. Hence, when we were getting killed the other day, it wasn't the 2500 apache requests were getting every minute, but also the multiple DB requests we make for each of those actions. Hence, running the DB on a separate server from the the apache server, you greatly increase your ability to process responses. Moreover, RDS allows you to setup Master/Slave read hierarchies, so handle spikes in load.

From a security perspective, I guess the biggest part is partitioning your data away from your publicly visible web host. If someone were to gain root access to your EC2 server, they wouldn't necessarily have access to your data. Additionally, RDS has some great backup support, so if you do lose something, your not down for long.

[eluser]hcri50[/eluser]
THANK YOU VERY MUCH for taking the time to explaining it to me.

I will hold on to this valuable information.

robert

May I contact you if I have any other questions, James?

[eluser]theseamusjames[/eluser]
Sure man, but honestly I'm not much of a sysadmin. I just work for a startup where I have to fill a lot of different roles.

[eluser]hcri50[/eluser]
I am not in a startup but I run my own Non-profit. where I play allot of different rolls.

One man show here just trying to survive