What is a Serverless Database?

The serverless approach is one that removes infrastructure management from your responsibilities, allowing cloud service providers to do the heavy lifting. Serverless building is a great option for companies looking for a dependable, cost-efficient service that doesn’t require heavy backend maintenance. The same can be said for those looking to use a serverless database- bypassing the much strenuous maintenance and configuration process of physical data servers.

Based on the traditional serverless approach, serverless databases are databases that bypass database servers and IT infrastructure, placing the management of those assets on cloud providers. While traditional databases require more servers to scale and grow, serverless databases are able to scale at a moment’s notice, responding better to workload variance better than traditional databases.

With databases coming in so many shapes and sizes, it’s hard to tell whether the serverless approach could work for you. Despite the variations, serverless databases are extremely flexible and offer unparalleled benefits for users, streamlining the growth of databases as a whole.

The Different Types of Serverless Databases

As with traditional databases, serverless databases come in many different shapes and sizes to meet different serverless applications and service requirements. The most common types of serverless databases include:

Relational Databases

Relational databases are databases that utilize SQL and the relational data model, or models that organize data using specific schemes and tables. The tables relational databases use are often grouped by related information, thus relational in the name.

These types of databases are the most widely used and can be applied to a variety of different scenarios, including processing transactional data and structured data.

Popular options for relational databases include:

• Amazon Aurora AWS Serverless Database
• Google Cloud SQL
• Azure SQL Database Serverless
• Cockroach DB

NoSQL Databases

On the opposite end of relational databases are non-relational databases, or NoSQL databases. NoSQL is used as a blanket term, with this category of database simply referring to any database that doesn’t use structured data concepts. 

Despite the lack of structure, NoSQL databases are ideal for horizontal scaling and for a flexible approach to data storage. These databases in particular are adept in handling large volumes of data, no matter the type. 

Popular NoSQL options include:

• Amazon DynamoDB
• MongoDB Atlas
• Azure Cosmos DB

That being said, the best serverless database will be the one that meets your application and scaling needs perfectly, without missing a beat.

Serverless Database Benefits

Removing servers from your database control and pushing management and maintenance responsibilities to cloud providers certainly has its benefits, allowing dev and data teams to focus on core tasks being one of the most important ones.

Other benefits of using serverless databases include:

Reliability

The good thing about using serverless databases is having your data being protected by cloud providers. With some of the biggest providers being AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, you can rest well knowing that your data is in safe hands.

Cloud providers often use state of the art tech and other serverless functions to protect your data, including backups, replicas, different availability zones, and more. These databases are also highly distributed and have built-in healing features to preserve high availability while increasing your fault tolerance.

Scalability 

One of the biggest advantages of serverless databases is not having to provision servers to accommodate for larger data volumes. Removing the physicality from databases allows users to instantly scale to meet large workload spikes, a process that would normally take adding new servers to even achieve.

This elastic scale also removes the need for downtime and performance drops, as adding physical data space requires downtime.

Ease of Management and Higher Productivity

A big contributor to headaches is configuring and managing the backend of certain systems and applications. Regardless of the service type, many maintenance processes are often a pain that requires hours on end to conduct, without counting firefighting bugs and other inhibitors. 

With the infrastructure and backend taken care of by cloud service providers, data and development teams can focus on their core tasks. Serverless database UI is typically extremely intuitive as well, if these teams do need to deal with backend they won’t get lost.

Cost Efficiency

Oftentimes, serverless databases are offered using pay-as-you-go pricing, meaning that users are charged based on consumption rather than ownership. This approach is extremely flexible and beneficial for most parties, granting users granular control over their database resources and contributing to stronger capacity planning. 

The serverless approach has been steadily gaining popularity as a result of the flexibility and cost savings. Datadog estimates that for organizations running in Azure and Google cloud, serverless adoption has grown by 6 and 7 percent, respectively. With more and more users flocking to remove server management from their rolodex of responsibility, it begs the questions, when do you draw the line between serverless database usage and traditional usage?

Serverless vs Traditional Database Use Cases

The serverless vs traditional database debate is one that rages on, with utility for each data housing avenue serving specific purposes for specific applications. That being said, when should you use one or the other?

Serverless Database Use Cases

The serverless database approach is one that values flexibility and scale, reducing costs and management woes in the process.

Popular use cases for serverless databases include:

Endless Databases

Serverless databases are able automatically scale up and down, reacting to workload spikes at a moment’s notice. Unlike traditional databases that require physical server space to scale, serverless databases can scale through cloud service providers.

This approach is especially useful for businesses whose workloads are unpredictable and might require databases to be on and off constantly. The ability to scale seamlessly is also implicative of the future proof nature of serverless databases, creating an endgame solution for those interested in reliable data housing without switching.

Testing

Serverless databases are the perfect database solution for testing environments because of their lightweight shell. From testing and prototyping, to creating new environments, serverless databases are the go-to for solutions still in their infancy.

SaaS Apps and Services

Traditional databases incur tons of overhead costs, weighing heavy on the users that choose this avenue. Serverless databases bypass this, allowing SaaS vendors to provision database clusters at a fraction of the cost. This resource saving is also exemplified with the ability of serverless databases to be on/off upon request, saving resources in the long run based on the pay-as-you-go model.

Cost Efficiency

Perhaps the biggest draw to serverless databases, cost efficiency is on the grand stage as users only pay for what they use. No overhead, no machine costs, no extra fees.

With serverless databases, users receive comparable, if not better reliable database performance at a fraction of competition cost. Pay for the resources you use and nothing more with serverless databases.

Traditional Database Use Cases

Although clunky and requiring more maintenance and management, traditional database infrastructure offers unique benefits for users choosing this solution. Use cases for these databases include:

Higher Level of Control

While serverless databases remove management and configuration from your responsibilities, traditional databases are ideal for users looking for granular control. The ability to choose and configure things like hardware and software, to policy and even the servers used to host databases is strong. This control can also lead to extremely optimized resource consumption, one that rivals serverless approaches for a similar cost.

Data Privacy

The biggest pro for using traditional databases is the privacy you get in exchange for a higher price tag and a bit extra work.

Having your own servers and specific server locations grants you higher privacy, higher security, and varying data protection practices to safeguard your data. No nosy neighbors, no third-parties.

Whether you’re looking for the versatility and flexibility of a serverless database, or the security and control of a traditional database, there are tons of services and databases that can fill the role. 

Database Options with Lyrid

Going serverless is a competent option, regardless if you’re looking to build an application or host a database. The benefits of hosting a serverless database are second to none, including enhanced scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. And while serverless may seem like the logical option, this approach doesn’t completely replace the security of a traditional database for many users.

Whether you’re looking for serverless computing options or databases that require your control, look no further than Lyrid’s managed Database! Our fully managed database solution offers fully-managed and production ready MySQL and PostgreSQL databases at the click of a button. Your unstructured data receives top-tier treatment with our database solutions, offering features like:

• SecureGuard Database: All-in-one secure hub to minimize risks
• BackupHero Database: 24/7 backups and easy restoration
• FlexiScale Database: Flexible pricing plans for database instances
• RapidDeploy Database: Rapid deployment of prod-ready databases

And so much more!

Interested in learning more about our database options? Book a meeting with one of our product specialists today!