AWS unveils Cloud Directory for storage of hierarchical data

AWS has made its Cloud Directory product generally available for its US East, US West, Ireland, Singapore, and Australian datacentres, with the cloud computing giant stating that it is the back end used in its Cognito and Organizations products.

Besides the usual cloud-based management and scale advantages touted by Amazon Web Services, the company says Cloud Directory is able to handle multiple dimensions and data extension safely.

“Cognito User Pools use Cloud Directory to offer application-specific user directories with support for user sign-up, sign-in, and multi-factor authentication. With Cognito Your User Pools, you can easily and securely add sign-up and sign-in functionality to your mobile and web apps with a fully managed service that scales to support hundreds of millions of users,” AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr wrote in a blog post.

“Similarly, AWS Organizations uses Cloud Directory to support creation of groups of related AWS accounts and makes good use of multiple hierarchies to enforce a wide range of policies.”

Amazon said the new service is build for fast lookups and retrieval of data that will be “eventually consistent”.

For system administrators that use Microsoft’s Active Directory, Amazon still recommends the use of its Directory Service product.

Pricing for Cloud Directory begins at $0.0036 per 10,000 reads, $0.0039 per 1,000 writes, and $0.23 per GB of storage in AWS’ Oregon region, with Sydney having the most expensive pricing at $0.0084 per 10,000 reads, $0.0090 per 1,000 writes, and $0.285 per GB of storage.

For the third quarter of 2016, Amazon Web Services reported operating income of $861 million from $3.2 billion in revenue, up nearly 55 percent year-over-year.

Amazon is due to report its fourth quarter results next week.