Applications generate everything from basic web server logs and transactions to unstructured data ingested to feed large language models. The database environment is constantly evolving and application requirements are changing to meet new business needs. You need to decide if you can support this workload yourself (or through your team) by building a backend that meets the demand. Or is there an easy way to help manage and scale the database?
Even if your application is on the small side, adding functionality may require restructuring your design to handle different data sources. With new maintenance and monitoring tools available for all kinds of use cases, let’s break down the options. Regardless of your application, there are three ways to support your database.
self management
Responsible for deploying, configuring, managing, and general maintenance of database environments. If something goes wrong, you need a version update, or you need additional capacity, you are responsible for manually performing these routine tasks. The advantage is that you can manage your deployment. This option is usually more cost-effective, but can be difficult depending on the size and experience of your team.
Managed service
Cloud providers typically offer streamlined deployment processes and manage and maintain databases. This may include maintaining high availability, backups, and data replication tasks. In this environment, you pay less for day-to-day performance and pay more for managed services. Ingested data can still be managed, but the backend infrastructure is managed by the provider.
Self-managing – clustered deployment
Manually deploying selected databases one node at a time can be tedious. Especially if you need to support larger applications or architectural designs that require high availability or use multiple database types. Deploying a database cluster helps speed up this process by configuring nodes and replicas within the same deployment.
This option gives you the control that managed services often lack, giving you the flexibility to quickly install databases with replication across multiple virtual machines. However, once the cluster is deployed, it is responsible for all database administration tasks.
Database self-management
In any of these scenarios, managed database services or marketplace solutions can be used to support your application and database infrastructure. Read recent releases about cluster deployments supporting MongoDB, MariaDB with Galera, PostgreSQL, and Redis Sentinel.
As we go down the path of managing our own database, here are some of the more popular administration and monitoring tools to help you get started.
- Monitor and manage Percona Optimize database performance and track behavior patterns for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Percona, and MongoDB.
- phpMyAdmin Simplify database management with data import/export capabilities, direct modification of database tables, and search options using key terms or SQL queries.
- Cluster control Create a single pane of glass to manage the entire database lifecycle, including the ability to configure custom notifications and reports, manage multiple databases from one control panel, and more.
You can explore databases and monitoring tools at market,or Managed database cluster in the cloud manager. Information about the above services and apps is also available in our documentation library.
