Building an Open Source Private DBaaS
In the ever-evolving landscape of data management, the choice between public and private database as a service (DBaaS) solutions can be pivotal for businesses. While public DBaaS offerings like Amazon Web Services (AWS) RDS, MongoDB Atlas, and Google Cloud SQL are convenient and reliable, they may not always align perfectly with an organization’s specific requirements.
In contrast, building a private DBaaS using open source technologies offers unparalleled customization and control. In this blog post, we’ll explore the feasibility of creating your own private DBaaS and the advantages it provides over its public counterparts.
Why Do Companies Embrace DBaaS?
Database as a service has become a cornerstone of modern data infrastructure for several compelling reasons. It alleviates the burden of database management, allowing teams to focus on application development and business innovation. Additionally, DBaaS solutions offer high availability, scalability and security, making them an attractive proposition for organizations of all sizes.
Benefits of Public DBaaS like RDS or Atlas
- Convenience and ease of use: Public DBaaS solutions are pre-configured and managed by cloud providers, enabling rapid deployment and reducing administrative overhead.
- High availability and disaster recovery: Public DBaaS offerings often come with robust failover and backup capabilities, ensuring data integrity even in the face of unforeseen circumstances.
- Scalability: Services like RDS and Atlas allow for seamless vertical and horizontal scaling, ensuring that the database can grow with your application’s demands.
Challenges with Public DBaaS
- Limited customization: Public DBaaS solutions are designed to cater to a broad audience, which can sometimes mean sacrificing specialized configurations or settings.
- Vendor lock-in: Companies that rely heavily on a single provider may find it challenging to migrate their data and applications to a different platform in the future.
- Limited control over performance: Public DBaaS offerings may not allow for fine-grained control over the underlying infrastructure, potentially leading to suboptimal performance in certain scenarios.
- Data sovereignty and compliance: For organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements or specific compliance needs, relying on a third-party public service may not be feasible.
- Cost overruns: While public DBaaS solutions can offer cost-effective scaling, if not carefully managed, they can lead to unexpected expenses, especially when it comes to data transfer and storage.
Benefits of Private DBaaS
- Tailored to specific needs: A private DBaaS solution allows for precise customization, enabling organizations to fine-tune databases to match their unique requirements.
- Enhanced security and compliance: With a private DBaaS, you have complete control over security protocols and compliance measures, ensuring data protection according to your organization’s standards.
- Reduced costs in the long run: While the initial setup may require more effort, over time, a private DBaaS can lead to cost savings compared to paying for a third-party service.
- Optimal performance optimization: With a private DBaaS, organizations have the ability to fine-tune databases at the hardware and software levels to achieve peak performance for their specific workloads.
- Complete data ownership and control: Organizations retain full control over their data, ensuring it remains on-premises or within their chosen cloud infrastructure, meeting compliance and regulatory requirements.
- Customizable security measures: Private DBaaS solutions allow for the implementation of bespoke security protocols, ensuring that data is protected according to the organization’s specific needs.
Challenges with Private DBaaS Solutions
- Complexity of implementation: Building a private DBaaS requires a substantial investment of time and resources, including skilled personnel to manage the infrastructure.
- Ongoing maintenance: Maintenance tasks, including patching, updates and monitoring, are entirely the responsibility of the organization, which can be demanding.
Choosing between public and private DBaaS solutions ultimately comes down to the unique needs and priorities of your organization. While public offerings like RDS or Atlas provide simplicity and ease of use, private DBaaS solutions offer unparalleled customization and control.
Building your own private DBaaS using open source technologies is indeed a viable option for businesses seeking to maximize the potential of their data infrastructure. Though it requires careful planning and dedicated resources, the rewards in terms of flexibility, security and cost-effectiveness can be substantial in the long run.
Working Toward Open Source Private DBaaS with Percona Everest
For organizations seeking to harness the benefits of a private DBaaS without re-inventing the wheel, we’re working on Percona Everest, which we’ve just put out as an alpha under the Apache Software License (ASL). It is an ambitious project to provide open source private DBaaS whether that’s on-premises or on the public cloud of your choice.
Percona Everest is designed to offer a seamless and fully open source private DBaaS experience, removing much of the burden of setup and maintenance.
We have built Percona Everest to work on top of Kubernetes, so if your organization already has expertise with Kubernetes but wants to reduce administrative and operational headaches around databases, we’re hoping it’ll be ideal for you.
If not? We would love feedback. We’re open to bug reports, pull requests and questions. Tell us what’s good, what’s bad or what’s weird.
Where and how you host your data is critical to your organization. If you have decided to explore a DBaaS approach, consider whether a single-provider solution is right long term.
While public offerings provide convenience and ease of use, private DBaaS solutions offer customization and control. With the introduction of Percona Everest, we offer a vision of a fully open source private DBaaS solution that streamlines implementation, putting you in the driver’s seat of your data infrastructure.
