Xeround today announced the general availability of its Cloud Database for MySQL Applications. Xeround is a pay-per-use cloud database service that enables customers to only pay for actual resources consumed and not by server/instance size. This can be contrasted with other Cloud Databases, notably Amazon RDS, that require customers to commit to a pre-set instance size that provides pre-set storage and processing capabilities. In a boon to spiky applications, Xeround is able to automatically scale up or down exactly to the needs of the application so that the database gets additional resources when it needs more size/throughput, and scales back down when it is underutilized. Xeround is available as either a database as a service, or as a virtual appliance.

Xeround’s cloud database is currently available on Amazon EC2, on the Heroku PaaS, and will apparently soon be available on Rackspace. Xeround has been in beta for nine months with 2000 users including some using it for production environments. With their move to GA, Xeround will guarantee 99.9% availability and no operation downtime for customers. Xeround’s database service includes built-in replicas and automatic failover to ensure high availability, as well as Xeround’s industry-first auto-scaling features.

In terms of flexibility of charging, Xeround charges based on two usage metrics: Database Size and Data Transfer. For end users this should mean that the costs of running their database are tightly linked to the scale of the application it supports. In GA Xeround is offering a thirty-day free trial and thereafter users will be billed based on the actual resources consumed by their database. Xeround requires no subscription commitment and has no minimum charges. Database Size will be charged at $0.12/GB/hour, and Data Transfer will be charged at $0.46/GB. Furthermore, users who join by July 25th will enjoy 25% off their monthly costs until the end of the year as a special introductory offer.

Cloud database is a small but growing part of the cloud market – with a move to general availability Xeround is going to try to gain a toehold in the nascent space.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

2 Comments
  • Paul Hamond |

    I am a loyal reader of your posts Ben, they are quite informative.

    However, your rant at King’s i feel is quite distasteful (And this is coming from an Auckland Grammar old boy!).

    Definitely a let down of your standard Ben, stick to what your good at.

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