If you‘re building a modern application to handle unpredictable workloads, I want to help you explore some of the most popular serverless database options available today.
By automatically scaling capacity up and down based on usage, serverless databases eliminate the headaches of managing infrastructure yourself. They deliver great cost efficiency and performance too.
Together, let‘s check out the key benefits you can expect from serverless architectures as well as top providers to consider for your next project!
Serverless Databases Provide Flexibility, Availability, and Scale
While traditional databases require manually administering servers, serverless DBs handle all that for you.
They auto-scale compute and memory to match your workload‘s needs in real-time. So you avoid having to predict future traffic spikes or lulls.
We also gain built-in redundancy for high availability because popular services like Fauna and DynamoDB replicate our data across multiple data centers automatically.
Plus, you only pay for actual resources used per second! With traditional databases, we tend to over-provision capacity to handle peak load which wastes money.
Leading analyst firm Gartner predicts over 50% of new databases will deploy on serverless architectures by 2025. Other forecasts show global serverless DBaaS adoption accelerating at 17% CAGR through 2027.
Clearly, teams are flocking to serverless databases for their flexibility, scale, and operational simplicity. Now let‘s explore some top solutions that I recommend checking out.
#1 Fauna – Excellent Data Flexibility
Fauna makes it simple to build reactive, data-intensive applications without managing infrastructure. Their distributed NoSQL database provides extensive flexibility to model data including documents, graphs, and relational structures all within a secure API framework.
Advanced Features
- Native support for streams and temporal data
- Parallel query execution for high throughput
- Multi-region deployments with zone redundancy
- Fine-grained access controls powered by Roles
Fauna delivers exceptional performance for reading and writing data at global scale. Their benchmarks showcase sub-10ms latencies for workloads up to 100M reads per second.
While powerful for many web and mobile apps, Fauna may not suit applications needing complex analytical queries across extremely large datasets. But their flexibility and throughput make Fauna a top choice for most general use cases.
#2 MySQL/Postgres Without the Headache
Do you wish you could eliminate the headaches of managing MySQL or PostgreSQL database clusters?
With Amazon Aurora Serverless, now you can! This managed service delivers the relational data capabilities both options are known for while automating administration, scaling, backups, and more.
Aurora Serverless can spin up in under 1 second and scale compute capacity instantly based on your workload‘s demand. High availability is baked in via multi-AZ storage replication.
And security is enterprise-grade including encryption, access controls, and audit logging. No wonder AWS touts Aurora adoption growing 3x year-over-year!
So if you want battle-tested relational database compatibility without operational complexity, check out Aurora Serverless.
DBaaS Leader CosmosDB Goes Serverless Too!
Ranked aLeader in Gartner‘s 2022 Magic Quadrant for cloud database services (DBaaS), Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB delivers multi-model APIs with turnkey global distribution and scale.
Now with the CosmosDB serverless deployment option, you also get sub-second auto-scaling to match your workload‘s peaks and valleys without pre-provisioning capacity.
Inside CosmosDB‘s architecture are auto-scaling compute engines, storage and IO isolations layers, and CosmosDB‘s vectorized query execution model – all optimized for elasticity.
So if your app needs a fully-managed database with SQL, NoSQL, and other API options configured across regions worldwide, put CosmosDB on your evaluation list.
Still Deciding Which Direction is Best?
Hopefully this overview gives you a headstart on matching potential serverless database candidates to your application needs.
As you evaluate options, prioritize factors like your data access patterns, latency budgets, team skills, and budget constraints.
I‘m happy to offer suggestions if you want to discuss further details on finding the ideal database for your next project. Just let me know!
Otherwise best of luck with your serverless journey ahead – I‘m excited for you! Chat soon.
