<story><title>Heroku&apos;s new $50 and $100 per month database plans</title><url>https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/5/3/crane_the_new_50_per_month_production_database_/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jstin</author><text>Heroku sells convenience, and resells EC2 instances to you. Their previous dedicated database option, Ronin, cost $200/month. When you connect the dots that this DB has a 1.7GB cache and that a small instance on EC2 has 1.7GB memory[1], you start to realize what you&apos;re really paying for.&lt;p&gt;While paying 3.3 times more[2] may be ok for the added simplicity, you have to wonder if your &apos;dedicated&apos; database is really just a small instance on EC2? If it is a larger instance, then you are sharing it with other users.&lt;p&gt;However, even a small instance is far from not being shared. EC2 has performance issues, especially small instances. Disk IO is the worst.[3]&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer:  These are all just my observations, and I don&apos;t how Heroku actually configure their Ronin databases. I&apos;d love to be proven wrong, and to have someone from Heroku explain. But from personal experience with both EC2 and Heroku&apos;s Ronin database, if my conclusions are wrong, the results are not. I&apos;ve seen very slow performance on the simplest of queries on both configurations.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/&lt;/a&gt;
[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frederico-araujo.com/2011/12/27/why-ec2-still-sux-on-disk-io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.frederico-araujo.com/2011/12/27/why-ec2-still-sux...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Heroku&apos;s new $50 and $100 per month database plans</title><url>https://postgres.heroku.com/blog/past/2012/5/3/crane_the_new_50_per_month_production_database_/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>shaggyfrog</author><text>If anyone from Heroku is reading, that page is a great example of how poor contrast results in poor readability. Blue-on-blue text makes me close the browser tab, and not actually see what you&apos;re trying to sell.</text></comment>