In modern-age computing powered by IoT and Analytics, database is not just an information repository, but a key driver of business growth. Cloud-based database infrastructure solutions are chosen over on-premise versions not only for cost savings, but also for their flexibility and performance features.
RavenDB, a provider of DBaaS managed service, claims its DB can achieve 150,000 writes per second, and over one million reads on commodity hardware. Applications can scale from microservers to large enterprise scenarios spanning hundreds of endpoints. The distributed data network is designed to support modern applications like IoT, big data and microservices architecture.
On-premise vs Cloud: How do CIOs make the decision?
The decision to choose between on-premise and Cloud revolves around three considerations: minimizing cost, reducing complexity, and sparing developer resources.
“The Cloud can save, on average, 15 percent for any application. The challenge is that this is not a given. Unless you have a database that knows how and where to take advantage of what the Cloud offers, you might wind up paying a Cloud provider more. According to published reports, $10 billion each year is wasted on unnecessary Cloud costs,”said Oren Eini, RavenDB’s CEO.
Businesses opting for the Cloud are also encountered with the backward compatibility issues. Buying new hardware or revamping the DB is not an option especially for small and medium enterprises.
“RavenDB uses as little resources as possible. We are used to working with older machines and machines with little memory, allowing you to perform the existing tasks, while provisioning less costly machines. The superior performance while minimizing trips to and from the server, along with burstable instances setup enables significant cost savings,” Eini said.
Why managed DBaaS?
Managing the DB in-house means enterprises spend hugely on the operational and maintenance costs, in addition to bringing high-level expertise. Most small and medium enterprises are not in a position to afford these demands.
“To manage the DB in-house, you need the expertise in the care and feeding of the database, and be able to monitor, manage and operate the database throughout your application development and production lifecycles,” said Eini.
RavenDB reduces much of the operational overhead with its load balancing features. It can observe the operational state of the processes and adjust the behavior of the server according to the load demands and queries on the database in real-time.
“With automatic caching feature, RavenDB helps save costs around repeat reading of data. If the data hasn’t changed, client won’t need to pay for the bandwidth to keep reading the same data over and again,” Eini said.
RavenDB also brings capabilities such as ‘includes’ and ‘lazy requests,’ which help reduce the number of times that the application needs to talk to the database, reducing both runtime performance and overall costs. Also, the fully transactional (ACID) feature of the DB helps maintain the accuracy.
For every query a user makes in the DB, RavenDB uses an index to answer the query. If an appropriate index does not exist, RavenDB will create a new one or be able to improve upon an existing index. In short, every query made in the DB will create an index in front of it. This will help reduce latency and boost performance, while also eliminating the need for manual intervention.
RavenDB is a query language that is 80 percent SQL and features a user-friendly GUI that details all aspects of the data required by the user.
With a managed DB service provider to deliver the performance, data integrity and simplicity, CIOs can focus more on the data and its usability, while development teams in-house can focus more on their applications.
“We do everything on the back end. Your day-to-day chores of maintaining hardware servers, installation, configuration, monitoring internals and security, managing your database’s performance, high-availability, backups, patches, costs and updates are now in the hands of the people who built RavenDB,” Eini said.
How to future-proof the DB architecture?
Data-intensive and low-latency applications arising from modern trends like IoT and edge computing have brought the need for a futuristic IT that can evolve itself in response to the new demands. A managed service provider delivers many of the efficiencies required in such use cases.
“As the IoT expands to over 50 billion devices, most of them small and with limited internal resources, RavenDB will be able to work with them, and often work inside them to enable capturing data from just about anywhere and processing it to centralized locations,” Eini said. “Our pull replication enables you to move data up the hierarchy without security issues or performance challenges.”
Recommendations to CIOs to achieve DX goals
“Having a measurable idea about what your end goal is will be a great advantage as you try to select what you’ll use in the near and midterm future,” according to Eini.
Architecture and patterns such as microservices allows the businesses to decompose the systems into individual pieces that are independent from one another. “This makes each piece lightweight to the point where you can easily discard a piece of technology and re-write it from scratch. You don’t need to make long bets on technologies. You can hedge your bets and avoid making risky decisions, because your architecture and system allow you to reverse them at minimal cost,” Eini said.
Rajani Baburajan
