Why Database as a Service?

If you are a software developer or even a technical director, you have probably heard of all kinds of things you should use to help your software grow. Some of those things might have been related to Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions: that is, such solutions that offer access to software for a monthly subscription or a fee. However, what might also be interesting to you is the fact that people do not only sell Software as a Service solutions: there are many more! For example, we have IaaS which stands for Infrastructure as a Service and the like, but in this blog post, we are going to have a look into why you should be using Database as a Service (in other words, DBaaS) solutions. Let’s get started, shall we?

What’s DBaaS?

If you are a database-savvy engineer, you have probably heard about Database as a Service solutions offered to the world. If you have not though, no worries – DBaaS translates to, you guessed it, Database as a Service, and DBaaS solutions usually allow you to access and use certain database systems without the hassle of setting them all up and monitoring them manually – good DBaaS solutions will not only provide you with an overview of your database clusters, but also let you monitor the services you have running on them, provide you with query statistics letting you uncover slow-running queries, let you add users or databases, come with load balancers, let you back up your data, and so much more. Sounds like a dream? It’s really not!

CCX

Take a look – here’s how a service called CCX developed by the database experts over at Severalnines looks like when you first import a datastore inside of it:

As you can see, CCX by Severalnines will instantly provide you with the state of your services saving you from a lot of manual work and headaches related to it, CCX will also provide you with some general information about your database node, whether it’s available or not, what version of a database cluster it’s running, what’s its topology, what tags are associated with it, etc. You will also see relevant instance information to help you understand everything related to your datastore volume sizes.

Those reasons alone might be convincing enough for you to try out a Database as a Service (DBaaS) solution, but CCX has so much more to offer: for example, the monitoring tab will let you observe the load of your database instances, how much CPU or RAM is being used, etc. with just a click of a button – or would you rather monitor it all manually?

Oh, and did we even mention that CCX by Severalnines has a couple of chart sets in this scenario as well? You can even choose what you want to monitor – your system, your database nodes or load balancers and on what ranges as well: if you want to only see results relevant to the last hour or 30 minutes, you’re more than welcome to do so! CCX will also refresh all of the statistics every 30 seconds if you so desire.

With that being said, keep in mind that CCX by Severalnines will let you observe the top queries running on your database instances, as well as let you observe the amount of current connections in your database without you even touching the CLI and running queries yourself:

As you can see, you will instantly be able to see on what database instance did your queries run, what’s their execution time, how many times did the queries execute, etc. too: isn’t that amazing?

Head over to the Users and Databases tab of CCX by Severalnines and you will even be able to add users to your database instances (oh, and databases too!) Impressed yet?

Database as a Service solutions can be very useful in the backup regard as well: you can see when were your backups created, what does their schedule look like, see if they are incremental, full, or not by simply clicking on the Backups tab:

Good Database as a Service solutions will even let you change their settings if you so desire. CCX will even let you choose when do you prefer the team to work on regular maintenance.

DBaaS solutions usually also come with security options in mind: you can be sure that all of your data is safe because you are accessing a secure website. If something goes wrong with your database clusters, professional 24/7 support is also always available at the snap of your fingers.

However, you might also want to make sure that all of your online accounts are safe as well: for that, you can make use of one of the largest data breach search engines on the planet – BreachDirectory – and check if your accounts are at risk – you can evaluate if you are at risk of identity theft in mere milliseconds.

To sum up, database as a service (DBaaS) solutions can put a lot of hassle off your shoulders if you were monitoring your database nodes and clusters manually up until this day – DBaaS solutions can easily automate tasks you need to perform, so there’s really no reason not to try them out. Make sure to try CCX by Severalnines today and tell us what you think.