Oracle brings MySQL Heatwave cloud database service to AWS
The tech giant launched a new MySQL cloud database service running on AWS infrastructure that will support both analytical and transactional database workloads.
The Oracle MySQL Heatwave database service is now available on AWS, marking the first time the cloud database offering is available outside of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
The MySQL Heatwave on AWS service became generally available on Sept. 12 and lets Amazon's cloud users directly run the service on AWS.
MySQL Heatwave is a cloud database service that first launched on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) in 2020, providing a managed offering that integrates both online analytics processing and online transaction processing capabilities. MySQL Heatwave competes with multiple online services, including Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud SQL for MySQL and Azure Database for MySQL.
To date, Oracle has not provided a full cloud database service that actually runs with another cloud provider's infrastructure. On July 20, the vendor launched Oracle Database Service for Azure, which lets Microsoft's cloud users easily manage and connect to Oracle Autonomous Database capabilities running in OCI. MySQL Heatwave on AWS does not use OCI but instead runs using AWS cloud resources.
Oracle branches out
"It is a historic event as Oracle has not offered its database offerings on another cloud than OCI," said Holger Mueller, analyst at Constellation Research. "It shows that Oracle cares for TCO [total cost of ownership] -- as customers can now keep and stay with their data on AWS. Effectively the software goes where the data is."
Oracle and AWS have long been rivals across multiple fronts, including competition over the U.S. Department of Defense JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract, which was canceled in 2021. Amazon has also aggressively targeted Oracle users with database migration efforts.
Not only is Oracle bringing MySQL Heatwave to AWS, but it is also debuting a number of features that aren't yet available for the same service running on OCI. The new features include an interactive query and data management console as well as performance monitoring from the console.
"While I expected it on OCI, Oracle's home turf, the new capabilities on the AWS platform takes it to a whole new level," said Futurum analyst Ron Westfall.
How MySQL Heatwave on AWS enables the cloud database
With Oracle's Database Service for Azure, Oracle now has a cloud interconnect partnership with Microsoft that lets Azure users access OCI. The same partnership isn't in place for AWS, which is one of the reasons why Oracle built the new MySQL Heatwave service for AWS.
It is a historic event as Oracle has not offered its database offerings on another cloud than OCI. It shows that Oracle cares for TCO [total cost of ownership] -- as customers can now keep and stay with their data on AWS. Effectively the software goes where the data is.
Holger MuellerAnalyst, Constellation Research
Without a fast interconnect between Oracle and AWS, the cost and latency of moving data from AWS to OCI can be high, said Nipun Agarwal, senior vice president of research and advanced development at Oracle.
He noted that by having the MySQL Heatwave service run natively inside of AWS, it can also integrate better with other AWS services that an organization might be running.
In terms of the technical architecture, Oracle is not using Kubernetes and containers to run the service. Rather the MySQL Heatwave on AWS is using Amazon EC2 virtual machine (VM) instances.
Agarwal said Oracle has done a lot of work to optimize the VMs to run the MySQL Heatwave software. From a storage perspective, MySQL Heatwave on AWS users can now load data directly from an Amazon S3 cloud object store as well.
While all the compute and storage infrastructure for the MySQL Heatwave on AWS service runs in AWS, users cannot buy the service directly from the AWS Marketplace, which is typically how enterprises acquire and provision many AWS applications.
Instead, organizations need to go to cloud.mysql.com to provision the AWS service. Billing is also all done via Oracle, which did not disclose other pricing details.
Moving forward, Oracle plans to provide a MySQL Heatwave service for Microsoft Azure later this year. Agarawal said that while there might be a Google Cloud service at some point in the future, providing the service on Google is not an immediate priority because there isn't the same degree of customer demand for it as there is for MySQL on AWS and Azure.
