By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
This database option offers the usual cloud benefits (pay-as-you-go structures, less on-premise maintenance) and drawbacks (less control, more upfront migration work).
With cloud databases, users are charged for storage and bandwidth usage, rather than traditional software licenses associated with on-prem database options.
The benefits. First: IT pros in need of some scalability can increase and decrease database size as necessary. Other advantages include a reduction in IT infrastructure and outsourced maintenance of tasks like upgrades, backups, and data recovery—capabilities that may now fall to the vendor. Guaranteed uptimes are also negotiated through service-level agreements. (Another cloud database option, self-managed databases, provides the infrastructure, while allowing a DB admin to maintain their usual responsibilities.)
The drawbacks. Like any cloud offering, an IT pro loses control over certain administrative capabilities they might be familiar with when using an on-prem set-up: running backups, installing the database, and maintaining and monitoring database servers, for example. Also, data migrations to the cloud require complex, exhausting steps like data inventory, classification, standardization, and testing.
Who’s in. Major vendors like AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM offer cloud databases.
Cloud databases have two main categories:
- Relational databases use structured query language (SQL) to manage and retrieve information from a structured environment of rows and columns. (Examples, provided by a Google overview, include SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Spanner, and Cloud SQL.)
- Non-relational databases store unstructured data like email, documents, and sensor output—varied info that doesn’t quite fit into a familiar table. (Examples include MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, HBase, and Bigtable.)
Why are cloud databases important now? Here are some core reasons:
- AI workflows connect to and pull from scalable datasets. Cloud databases form the foundation for business-intelligence applications.
- Cloud databases integrate well with cloud-native applications.
- The databases are accessible from any location, which is an important function for decentralized workforces.
