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I run a RoR/MySQL/Apache stack currently on a slicehost slice. We are coming out of beta within the next few weeks and im concerned with the scalability of the slice, in case we get big. Ive been looking at offerings like linode,Storm on demand,EC2 and rackspace.

I don't quite understand how the DB would work "in the cloud" Would it at all? or do i put that elsewhere? I've looked around a bit and couldn't get a clear picture in mind the best route to take.

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All cloud services are not equal. The major issue you will face is highly varying disk IO capabilities in different cloud frameworks. I prefer a hybrid approach with dedicated servers providing the files/databases and the app servers in the cloud. – jeffatrackaid Dec 5 '11 at 20:05
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@jeffatrackaid This is usually my preference too, but there are security & availability caveats (an external dedicated DB needs to be accessible by the cloud machines, and a loss of connectivity between them can kill your app). Just food for thought when designing hybrid systems – voretaq7♦ Dec 5 '11 at 20:10
There are many providers in the hybrid space. We use SoftLayer for our LAMP platform service. Cloud/Dedi on same network with public/private GigE interfaces. Use RAID 10, SSD hardware on the backend and scale the app services as needed. – jeffatrackaid Dec 5 '11 at 20:11
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closed as not constructive by SvenW, Iain♦, voretaq7♦, Scott Pack, MDMarra Dec 5 '11 at 20:12

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I don't quite understand how the DB would work "in the cloud"

When trying to comprehend how something works "in the cloud", simply behave as if the words "in the cloud" were not used.

In your case, the question is really "Does my [cloud] provider have enough horsepower to run my database with an acceptable level of performance?" -- That's a question only you can answer (based on the information your provider gives you and your experience with the code during development and testing), but given adequate resources and good connectivity to the other servers there's no reason you couldn't put a database server "in the cloud", subject to performance caveats.

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