Cloudify your Databases Faster

Up and running with your databases on Amazon is now even faster. IBM recently published AMIs for DB2 Express-C 9.7.2. For those not in the know, DB2 Express-C is the free edition of IBM's enterprise class relational and XML database - DB2 for Linux and Windows (and Mac OS). And although DB2 Express-C AMIs have been available for quite some time, the newer AMIs include a web-based interface for initial setup and config, which makes the process a lot quicker.



The DB2 Express-C 9.7.2 AMIs are available both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms and are based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10. There is no license fees for running these development-use AMIs so you only pay for hourly EC2 and any other AWS charges. But since these are available through Dev Pay, you first need to subscribe (which in Dev Pay speak implies clicking on the "Purchase" button) to use these AMIs. Here are the links to Dev Pay entries to subscribe to DB2 Express-C 32-bit and 64-bit AMIs.

Once subscribed you'll need to know the AMI IDs to launch them. Here are the details:

US Region:
32-bit ami-1b30db72 ec2-dev-ibm-images/ibm-db2-express-c-9.7.2-32-bit.manifest.xml
64-bit ami-1930db70 ec2-dev-ibm-images/ibm-db2-express-c-9.7.2-64-bit.manifest.xml

AP REGION:
32-bit ami-97c7b8c5 ec2-dev-ibm-images-ap/ibm-db2-express-c-9.7.2-32-bit.manifest.xml
64-bit ami-7bc6b929 ec2-dev-ibm-images-ap/ibm-db2-express-c-9.7.2-64-bit.manifest.xml

There is also a 5-min video walking through the process of launching DB2 AMIs using the Amazon console but it has yet to be updated for the new web-based DB2 AMI initial config.

There are also Ubuntu 10.04 based DB2 Express-C AMIs if you prefer. And if you want to run DB2 on a different OS, well, since DB2 Express-C is free, you can simply download DB2 Express-C and create an AMI on the Linux or Windows OS of your choice.