Amazon Announces ElastiCache Beta

By Howard Young Aug 23, 2011

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) added a new service that allows you to cache objects to speed up the performance of applications.  ElastiCache is used to reduce the number of queries to a data base by caching results of repetitive operations.

The SaaS application first enquires against ElastiCache if an object is present and has not expired and uses the result instead of making a query against the slower data base.  Expired or non-existing objects still require a data base access, but the results are pushed into ElastiCache for future use.

ElastiCache is Memcached compatible so it should work with existing applications that use Memcached.

The smallest node you can lease from Amazon is 1.3GB of memory and runs about $2.28 per day to operate.  ElastiCache is available in large and extra large sizes scale at 4x and 8x the price with 5x and 11x the RAM respectively.

Traditionally to improve data base performance, Memcached is installed on an EC2 instance by the developer who maintains the open source system.  With ElastiCache, Amazon claims that there is a better way since the service is already configured and managed by them.  The cost is a penny more per hour for a similar standard EC2, but Amazon removes the pain and work from setting up a Memcached server.

---