EC2 Micro Instance – enough memory to run Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server

amazon ec2

The title pretty much says it. Can a micro instance (which only has 613MB of RAM) run Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server without running out of memory? My company wants to use EC2 to host our site, but we want to keep costs low during development.

Best Answer

I think Windows Micro (613MB RAM) instances are great for their true cloud purposes: namely on-demand access to compute power for transient activities, such as training environments or basic dev/playground/lab activities. For running an actual website, with real clients and potentially some load, you really can't go less than a small instance size. Costs aren't too bad if you buy a Small Reserved Instance, but don't go too cheap and try to use the Micro in production.

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R – run Windows Server 2008 on Amazon EC2

You can now!

Amazon revealed Windows Server 2008 availability in december 2009 and there are pre-build AMIs ready for use either with or without Sql Server 2008.

See their Windows information page for more info about pricing and such. The Windows & .NET Developer Center is also a useful resource.

Mysql – Reducing memory consumption of thesql on ubuntu@aws micro instance

In your /etc/my.cnf file:

performance_schema = 0

And restart MySQL. This should chop memory usage dramatically if you previously had it on.

Edit: For MySQL versions between 5.7.8 and 8.0.1 (not required from 8.0.1 onwards), the above is not enough to free your memory of performance schema data:

As of MySQL 5.7.8, even when the Performance Schema is disabled, it continues to populate the global_variables, session_variables, global_status, and session_status tables.

(source)

To prevent this behaviour, set show_compatibility_56 to 1 in addition to performance_schema. That is to say, your my.cnf changes should look like:

performance_schema = 0
show_compatibility_56 = 1

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Related Solutions

R – run Windows Server 2008 on Amazon EC2

Mysql – Reducing memory consumption of thesql on ubuntu@aws micro instance

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