I’m a natural sceptic. Growing up in NYC didn’t exactly change that either. So, when Amazon, MS, and Google promise me relational databases that don’t need maintenance, I want to examine the facts before I really believe these claims.
You’re #CuriousAboutData — so read on!
Good thing that companies come to us with their cloud issues. At BitWise, we get a front row seat at the “broken promises” tragicomedy.
You see, nobody make 100% false claims. That would be too easy. Consider, for example Amazon’s RDS. They claim to manage it for you.
— Is it true?
No, you’re still responsible for making sure it’s running well.
— Is it false?
Not entirely. They do give you a decent default configuration and can manage read replicas for you and whatnot.
It’s nice, but far from managing it.
Same thing with Google’s GCP (Google Cloud Platform). Their managed databases are great, but very restrictive. If you’re not doing anything special, it’s really fine. The problem is most people are usually doing something special. Otherwise they’d just use excel. 🙂
And don’t even get me started on Azure. You can’t even run a “use db” statement.
So what happens when people believe these promises and things don’t work out? It’s interesting, actually. The authority position of these giants is so strong that their clients blame everything else under the sun — except for their choice of platform!
It happens every day. I can not tell you how many calls we get every single week describing different software problems that are really DB configuration issues.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against managed services. They are a tool like any other. If I told you never use a managed DB service, it would be like saying: “Never use a hammer!” There are times when a hammer is the best tool, and there are times when it’s not. Same thing here. Options need to be weighed carefully in order to make a decision that will grow with you and scale gracefully.
Want to know how? Give us a call at BitWise and we’ll review your data usage with you.
