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Database Management in the Cloud Computing Era

Cloud Database

Introduction-

Cloud computing is the driving force behind many successful services, the reason being it offers businesses computing resources at scale. Database management can be an expensive and complicated operation, and many agile-minded teams aren’t satisfied with the slow progress of the database development process. That’s where cloud database management comes in. This guide outlines the basics of cloud database management and reveals how a cloud database management tool can help you achieve your desired goals.

What’s Different About Cloud Database Management?

Since Big Data arrived on the scene, database management has become more complicated and difficult. In addition to traditional, structured data like product intelligence and business contacts, we now have unstructured and semi-structured data, which is significantly harder to analyze. A significant amount of unstructured and semi-structured data comes from the mobile web.

With more people around the world accessing the internet and social media from their  mobile devices , the flood of unstructured and semi-structured data is growing exponentially. Many organizations find collecting, organizing, storing, and analyzing these types of data very challenging and tough.

The solution is the cloud, which is a viable option for businesses without a lot of funding available for capital investments in equipment or the budget to maintain an IT department capable of managing Big Data in-house. For this reason, many experts have claimed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) will eventually become the standard solution for all but the most mission-critical and hyper-confidential data.

Cloud databases are unique because they give users the ability to distribute data across wide geographical areas and across multiple servers in one physical data center. This capability is founded on cloud computing technology, which is made possible by virtualization. Relational database management systems (RDBMS) can’t offer this utility because they weren’t designed to support virtualization. To overcome this issue, many leading DBaaS providers—including Amazon and Microsoft—offer their own RDBMS applications optimized for the cloud computing environment.

Moving From an RDBMS to a Cloud Database

Depending on the application, moving from an RDBMS to a cloud database can either be a simple or complex process. There are several advantages associated with moving data to a NoSQL database (also known as a non-relational database management system) in the cloud when a business outgrows its legacy RDBMS. For a start, NoSQL was designed specifically for storing and retrieving huge quantities of data without requiring defined relationships (i.e., Big Data). However, data stored in a NoSQL database can still be structured. Here are a few key facts about NoSQL databases and how they function:

  • As their name suggests, NoSQL databases do not use SQL as their query language.

  • NoSQL databases guarantee eventual consistency only (not ACID).

  • NoSQL databases have a distributed, fault-tolerant architecture.

Cloud Database Management Tool

The most efficient and reliable way to establish successful cloud database management practices is to implement a cloud database management platform. With the right cloud database management platform, you can better reap the full benefits of migrating to a cloud database, including value, elasticity, scalability, redundancy, high availability and much more. SolarWinds DPM is a cloud database management system and database monitoring tool built to monitor and optimize the performance of open-source and NoSQL databases. This SaaS platform is delivered via a web-based user interface that’s easy to access from anywhere. DPM uses lightweight agents via multiple configurations and is designed to monitor databases locally, hybrid, or in the cloud.

Characteristics of cloud databases

The first characteristic is elasticity, which refers to the ability to add and subtract nodes (i.e., actual physical machines or virtual machines), when the business and underlying application requires it. When nodes are added and subtracted, this can happen as and when necessary without the need for downtime. While NoSQL cloud databases are notably elastic, RDBMS makes elastic expansion and contraction difficult to manage.

The next characteristic is scalability, which is directly related to the elasticity of a cloud database. This is because a cloud database’s elasticity makes it possible to scale out in a linear fashion, so database performance can increase when necessary. Scalability also means large volumes of data can be processed in the same amount of time as small volumes of data, helping you meet SLA response times even when demand spikes.

Cloud database users also benefit from high availability because they can piggyback off the cloud provider’s infrastructure, which is designed to provide easy data distribution and redundancy. Because cloud providers can distribute resources across different geographies, the underlying database of a cloud application can read and write from any node in the cloud database—contributing to the cloud database’s ease of data distribution.

Redundancy is another important characteristic. Cloud databases can store redundant copies of data over a wide geographic area or on different physical server racks in the same data center. When redundant copies are distributed in this way, it helps ensure high availability.

Cloud databases support all datatypes by offering flexible and dynamic schema that accept all key data formats. This includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Because cloud databases are elastic and scalable, they also tend to be far less costly. This is because the pricing model for cloud computing is usually pay-as-you-go.

Cloud Database Management Options

A variety of cloud database management systems are available to store and analyze both relational (SQL) and non-relational (NoSQL) types of data. Here’s a list of some of the leading service providers and their solutions: 


  • MicrosoftAzure/SQLDatabase – A “full featured relational database-as-a-service,” with “Tables” that offer NoSQL capabilities for storing large amounts of unstructured data, and “Blobs” (Binary Large Objects) for storing large amounts of unstructured text, video, audio and images.

  • AmazonWebServices/DynamoDB/RelationalDatabaseService – Amazon’s offerings include NoSQL, MySQL, Oracle and MS SQL Server solutions. SimpleDB is Amazon’s “highly available and flexible non-relational data store that [takes on] the work of database administration.”

  • Xeround – A fully managed MySQL DBAAS that the vendor calls a “drop-in solution” because it “automates all configuration and ongoing DB operations.”

  • GoogleCloudSQL/GoogleAppEngineDatastore – Google’s solutions for storing structured and unstructured data.

  • ClearDB – This MySQL DBAAS boasts 100% uptime due to its “multi-regional read/write mirroring.”

  • Database.com – A native cloud database service developed in house at Salesforce.com that became generally available in 2011. The vendor’s website says it was “built with the needs of a social and mobile world at its core, not as an afterthought.”

The unique features of cloud databases (namely the ability to distribute data across wide geographical areas and among different servers in one physical data center) are based on cloud computing technology made possible by virtualization, something relational database management systems (RDBMS) were not designed for.

To get around this limitation, leading DBAAS companies including Microsoft and Amazon offer their own RDBMS applications or software optimized for the cloud computing environment.



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