Many now decide to move their enterprise database to the cloud from on-premises data centers. This is one of the major technological shifts, which offers more flexibility to the enterprises and saves cost and money. However, one key question you need to answer yourself while moving to the cloud is how you want your database to run on the cloud?

• Do you want to move towards any random DBaaS (Database as a Service) offered by cloud providers? Or,
• Do you want to go with managed database storage approach for Cloud IaaS based resources?

Here in this article, we will discuss the pros and cons of these two cloud database approaches and how you can effectively meet the challenges of running a cloud database.

How cloud changed the database scenario

The traditional DBs need enterprises to provide all their underlying infrastructure and needed resources to handle their databases stored on-premises. However, Cloud revolutionized the database management approach in which the resources are now made available on a pay-as-you-use basis, which allows the organizations to decide their spending based on their immediate needs. Cloud service providers offer database migration support to help enterprises migrate their on-premises database to the cloud quickly and easily.

In fact, along with its primary objective of offering scalable resources, the cloud offers more services. An ideal cloud offers database users many options while transitioning to the cloud. One such option is to avail the IaaS resources for better managing the abstracted version of on-premises traditional DBs. Another advantage is to use the Database as a Service (DBaaS) services by the provider.

Here, Database as a Service can take over the administration of underlying resources, tools, and infrastructure needed for the database to run successfully. This approach will let the companies benefit from cloud database services and free up on-premises personnel to focus more on the core business development and operational tasks. In SME sector organizations, the adoption of DBaaS will allow the business to launch without the need for several specialists on board as DBaaS can be implemented with a few clicks quickly.

The cloud market major player like AWS, Google Cloud, Azure all now offer DBaaS in various Microsoft SQL Server packages, MySQL cloud database, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and NoSQL DBs like MongoDB and Hadoop, etc.

• DBaaS offered by AWS includes Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS.
• Azure’s DBaaS suite includes Azure DBaaS for MySQL, Azure DBaaS for PostgreSQL, and Azure DBaaS for SQL Database etc.
• Offerings from Google Cloud are Cloud Spanner and Cloud Firestore, Cloud SQL for relational DBs and Cloud Big table, etc., for NoSQL DBs.

For choosing an appropriate database storage option, you may consult with expert remote database administration service providers like RemoteDBA. 

Managed storage for cloud DBs

Another wonderful option for cloud database deployment stays much closer to the approach of the traditional database model. Instead of fully depending on database services, the users can build a custom database on the cloud using native IaaS compute and leveraging the available storage resources. In effect, such a database will work the same as the on-premises legacy databases except that the database infrastructure is virtualized.

Running a cloud database may make it easy for the enterprise databases to scale up along with your increasing needs. In addition to scaling up on-demand to accommodate increased workloads, you can also enjoy full peace of mind regarding availability and security concerns as the cloud helps to enable database replication across various geographical locations. There are many database backup and recovery options that will save you from the challenge of losing your valuable enterprise data ever.

There are many other benefits too for this model while used in combination with managed storage. With the use of data management platforms as Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the cloud database can gain a lot more efficiency with automation. It can reduce the cost and labor overheads significantly. It can also ensure a higher degree of data protection and more control than basic DBaaS. However, there are some other challenges too to consider while choosing an appropriate cloud database deployment approach. Let us have a closer look into these challenges and methods to address those.

Size Limitations

This may be one of the most notable differences between managed storage and DBaaS. Over the last few years, DBaaS offerings have been expanded to their maximum capacity, and now the providers offer many autoscaling features. Still, these also come with some hard limits in terms of storage. Enterprise DBs may need to grow over time and need to look for ways to overcome managed storage limitations. One way to overcome this shortfall is to use data tiering to explore the cheap storage tiers and larger scaling capacities.

Data Protection

Your database may be safe on the cloud, but still, there is a need for it to be backed up from time to time. DBaaS usually offers daily snapshots of your database and backups at timely intervals; however, these may still not be enough in enterprise-grade database scenarios. You can check out the options for managing storage, which may be of help here, like the Cloud Volumes ONTAP offering services like point-in-time DB snapshot copies and a high availability guarantee. 

Storage Performance

Performance of the database is also a major consideration to be made on moving to the cloud. On the public cloud, the performance of the storage is based on how much capacity is provisioned. You may either over-provision the capacity to ensure performance or can switch to more expensive disk storage options. 

Database Cloning

Database cloning is needed for testing and development purposes. This can have an impact on your cost and performance based on the cloud database option you choose. With DBaaS, the clones of your cloud-based database may essentially be the actual full copies of your database, which means that all underlying capacity of your database gets duplicated. 

In any case, the cloud offers great flexibility and scalability to run your increasing database workloads, either as a service or in the traditional way. Choosing cloud vs. traditional DBMS model will be based on your needs and the challenges you may face as the business grows. Suppose you are aiming at a service that can offload many of your standard database and tasks related to infrastructure management tasks. In that case, you have a wider range of options where the cloud offers many advantages. If you aim at high-level adaptability, control, and protection, then managed storage may be an ideal choice.

Author’s Bio:

Walter Moore is a blogger and digital marketing expert. He is quite experienced in the field of web marketing as well as website designing. He has been working as a database administrator in the IT industry RemoteDBA. His research has helped thousands of users and brands with marketing campaigns too.