An alternative to running PostgreSQL on your own is to rent or purchase PostgreSQL databases from a provider. Managed services allow you to easily work with your database as a service or API without having to worry about the behind-the-scenes management of the PostgreSQL software or the underlying servers.
Different types of managed services exist to serve different needs. This section will cover services provided by hosting or cloud providers, third-party managed databases, and databases provided by application platforms.
Databases managed by cloud providers
Perhaps the most familiar type of managed PostgreSQL hosting is the kind offered by cloud or hosting providers. Some examples of these include Amazon Web Service’s RDS (relational database service), Google Cloud Platform’s Cloud SQL, and Azure Database.
| Hosting Option | Cloud provider-managed |
|---|---|
| Project stage | Development, staging, production |
| Cost | Highly variable, depending on your selections and usage. |
| Performance | Highly variable |
| Scalability | High |
| Management complexity | Low |
| Additional notes | A highly scalable solution often offered by the same cloud provider that can run your applications. This allows for additional control over networking and performance without the heavy lifting of running your own servers. |
Cloud providers offer a wide variety of PostgreSQL databases fine-tuned to run in their data centers and operate seamlessly with their other services.
Cloud providers
The following cloud providers offer managed PostgreSQL databases that you can purchase, configure, and scale as your needs require:
The server and majority of PostgreSQL will be managed by the hosting provider, while you will be able to set up scaling options, tweak settings, and manage access. You can configure your databases to be connectable from the internet or connect them directly to your applications that are managed by the same provider.
Cost
PostgreSQL databases managed by cloud providers can have a wide range of costs. On the low end, some providers offer a free tier with minimal performance and uptime. At the high end, scaling automatically to meet any demand can cost you thousands of dollars overnight if you get an unexpected bump in traffic. As with most things in the cloud, your actual usage will impact your bill each month. Many clouds offer cost alerts or even automatic offs if usage / costs go above a certain point. It is important to monitor your usage and configure cutoffs to manage the operating costs of your database systems.
Scalability
Though costs can at times be difficult to predict, the good new is that scaling is incredibly easy in the cloud. The resources allocated to your databases are configurable on-the-fly. This means that you can increase the storage capacity, memory and computing power, or the number of replicas managing your data just by changing settings in your account. One of the powerful features that, if not configured carefully, can contribute to high costs is the ability to dynamically scale your database’s resources according to the current demand. This allows you to always have the capacity to serve your requirements assuming that you can cover the costs.
Performance
Related to scalability, performance is another area that is incredibly flexible in the cloud. You can often fine-tune the settings that have the largest impact on your database’s performance according to your usage patterns. You can also allocate additional resources if your current configuration is underpowered. Collocating your databases with the applications that use them can also help give you good networking performance between your databases and applications.
Management complexity
In terms of management complexity, cloud-hosted databases are fairly simple. You are paying the provider to shoulder most of the management burden for you. While you still need to control your account and the settings that affect your database, the hardware, operating system, and the majority of the PostgreSQL configuration will be handled for you. This can have a huge impact in reducing the management overhead of using a database, but in some special cases, you may not have access to the level of tuning you desire.
Additional notes
In general, paying for PostgreSQL databases managed by a cloud provider is usually an attractive option. It provides great flexibility in regards to scaling and performance with a smaller amount of management work. The drawbacks of going with a cloud provider’s database offering is that you might end up paying more than you would otherwise at certain levels. Additionally, there is the danger of being trapped with your current provider if your tooling begins to depend too heavily on provider-specific functionality.
Third party managed databases
An alternative to purchasing databases directly from your cloud provider, you can instead choose to manage your databases through a third-party provider. In most cases, this option will deploy and manage databases onto the cloud or clouds of your choice, decoupling the database management from the underlying resource providers.
| Hosting Option | Third party-managed |
|---|---|
| Project stage | Development, staging, production |
| Cost | Highly varied, depending on your selections and usage. |
| Performance | Highly variable |
| Scalability | High |
| Management complexity | Low |
| Additional notes | Third party managed databases have many of the same benefits as cloud provided databases. However, by managing your databases through a third party, you can decouple the database management from the underlying cloud provider. This can make it easier to migrate to a different host in the future and can sometimes allow for more powerful management options. |
Databases managed by a third party provider often use the same fundamental components as those offered by cloud providers themselves. However, third party providers often work with multiple clouds, spin up resources in your account, and often give you lower-level access if you desire. Instead of using the databases provided by a cloud provider, the service will start up virtual servers on the provider and install and configure PostgreSQL using these. They can tune settings on the operating system and provide you access to the server hosting your instances. An example of third party PostgreSQL providers is ElephantSQL, which currently can manage instances in four different clouds.
Third-party offerings
The following third-party providers offer managed PostgreSQL databases that you can purchase, configure, and scale as your needs require:
The server and majority of PostgreSQL will be managed by the provider, while you will be able to set up which cloud platform it the database runs on, scaling options, tweak settings, and manage access. You can configure your databases to be connectable from the internet or connect them directly to your applications that are managed by the same provider.
Cost
In terms of cost, third party solutions are often also highly variable. As a user, you will have to pay for the compute resources in the cloud you deploy to, as well as the management costs that your database management service charges. Since you are paying the cloud provider for more basic resources instead of a managed database, the costs on that side may be smaller. However, the costs associated with the management service might make it more expensive cumulatively at some price points. You will have to figure out how each side scales at different levels to determine what your total costs will be.
Performance
The performance characteristics of your database can also vary significantly. Since your management service is installing on compute instances in the cloud, your provider has the ability to tune the server configuration in addition to the PostgreSQL settings. This means that they may be able to adjust some settings to more reasonably match your needs.
On the other hand, they may not have access to the low-level layers of the virtualization and hardware components necessary to tune sufficiently. It is highly recommended to test your performance against the native databases offered by the cloud provider.
Scalability
Scalability for third party-managed databases is generally very good. Because these providers can deploy on any compute instance with sufficient resources, they can sometimes offer you a wider variety of scaling options than the cloud provider exposes. If one of your reasons for scaling is to increase availability, many third party services have the ability to span multiple availability zones or even providers.
Management complexity
Third party services for managing your databases have a range of complexity. Because this option requires coordination between two different providers (the cloud that hosts the compute instances and the database management service), there is an inherent increase in complexity compared to using the native database service offered by a cloud provider.
Some management services position themselves as a simplified option, hiding away complexity in much the same way as shared web hosting. Other solutions leverage the fact that the operating system is accessible to expose a wide array of configuration options to users. Many services offer both experiences to allow users to find their own preferred level of complexity.
Additional notes
Decoupling the database management from the underlying resource provider has both advantages and disadvantages.
You may have more flexibility in migrating to a different cloud provider if your database management service abstracts the underlying layer. This abstraction also gives you the ability to choose the level of complexity you are comfortable with. You can use the full abstraction and interface provided by the database management service, but since you also have access to the database servers provisioned for you, you can log in and modify the database servers as you see fit. The database management service may also provide an easy interface to manage these operating system-level tweaks.
The disadvantages of this setup come from that fact that you would be relying on multiple parties for the correct operation of your databases. This can increase the chances of service interruption. You also may miss out on any under the hood optimizations available for database services offered by your cloud provider. Your database management service will only have access to what your cloud provider exposes to them and they will be unable to optimize the underlying virtualization or hardware layers.
Overall, using a third party management service is about preferences and testing. You will need to test performance and understand how the pricing structure may affect you at various levels of usage.