Cloud Database : What is Cloud Database and How it Works

Cloud Database can meet up the data volumes that is expanding rapidly needs database management of the larger companies and websites today. Cloud Database is usually offered as a Service – DbaaS. A nice example can be Google Cloud Database. Just like other Cloud Computing services, Cloud Database as a Service has various advantages, however the complexity of back end setup of a Cloud Database server is quite obviously higher. We will not go through minute details on how to setup the backend of a Cloud Database, rather we will discuss on the main informations, which will be helpful for an average user.

How Cloud Database Works

Practically, there are only handful of original service providers, most small firms usually deploys the Cloud Database of the main brands, sometimes supplies as is or brand it to the end user. Amazon RDS,  Rackspace-MySQL, IBM’s own infrastructure, Google SQL are some of such examples of the first hand brands.

A Cloud database backend can run a traditional database software such like MySQL or specialized or optimized database software for using on cloud computing platform.

The major advantages of Cloud database are :

• Increased accessibility
• Auto-Scaling (Might not be applicable for traditional softwares)
• Automated recovery
• Scalability (inherited from Cloud Computing itself)
• Availability

Here is an diagram from IBM, which shows how it works :

Some Cloud Database Services

Here are some examples of Cloud Database Service Providers :

Google AppEngine Data Store : We already have mentioned about Google’s own service.

CouchBase : Couchbase is open source NoSQL for mission-critical systems.

Database.com : Provides an open source Cloud Database service written in almost any (programming-) language.

These are just three examples and most important and common Cloud Database services. As with the expansion of Virtualization and Cloud Server usage, the third party Cloud Database services is going to play a big role behind powering any kind of requirement at a minimum possible cost.