
SimpleDB gotcha: they can delete your data - jasonwatkinspdx
http://dailyawswtf.com/post/225746572/simpledb-gotcha
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cperciva
I _think_ this is just so that Amazon can avoid permanently storing data from
idle accounts which are within the free-storage quota. It really ought to be
better clarified, though.

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justinsb
Perhaps, but it's pure laziness. Amazon should simply archive the data if they
want to free up capacity on their SimpleDB servers. I can't imagine SimpleDB's
servers are struggling under the load of their dozen-or-so users.

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justinsb
Eventually consistent, and even then only temporarily so.

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jasonwatkinspdx
This is really unfortunate since it prevents using SimpleDB as the system of
record for any infrequently accessed data.

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brown9-2
Well it isn't a guarantee that they will delete the data, just a notice that
they won't be liable legally if they do decide to do so. Probably just a
legalistic CYA, but if so they should probably word it better.

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pavel_lishin
"Well it isn't a guarantee that they will delete the data, just a notice that
they won't be liable legally if they do decide to do so."

That's even worse. If I know my data will be deleted, and under what
circumstances, I can take steps to address the issue. "We might, potentially
delete data, probably not, but who knows?" is kind of hard to plan against.

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rykov
Loss of data after 6 months did not seem that bad after I read that Amazon
shuts down your MySQL (RDS) instance every week for up to 4 hours "for
maintenance"

[http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/10/introducing-rds-the-
amazo...](http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/10/introducing-rds-the-amazon-
relational-database-service-.html)

Edit: wording fix

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ryanwaggoner
You should read it again; there's a 4-hour "maintenance window" every week
where any required changes will be applied, but downtime is limited to the
time necessary to apply the changes, not the entire four hours. And you can
select the 4-hour window that's most convenient for you.

For larger sites, this seems like it would hardly be a problem...if you have a
pool of RDS instances, you could just stagger the maintenance windows so you
never have more than 1 of your instances down at a time.

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joshhart
Why not just write a cron job to insert a row every now and then eh?

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shpxnvz
The wording of the policy indicates that they can selectively delete just the
data which has not changed.

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btilly
The policy says accessed, not modified.

