I've been in software engineering since 2002, a time when cloud services didn't exist, so we relied on physical servers and manual deployments. Now, I've got a side project that faces about 5,000 requests per minute, and it's currently using a MySQL 8 database hosted on DigitalOcean which costs me around $100 monthly for modest specs. Meanwhile, I found a much better deal with OVH: $90 for a powerful AMD Ryzen server with 64GB of RAM and fast SSD storage. I'm contemplating switching to self-host this database but I'm curious about the workload involved in maintaining it—especially regarding updates and backups. How does the effort of self-managing a database compare to using a cloud service, and what tools or strategies do you recommend to make it easier?
5 Answers
Self-hosting isn't too bad if you have some sysadmin skills. Just remember, you'll need to stay diligent about backups and monitoring. It can get tedious compared to having a managed service handle those aspects for you.
When I managed database servers as a sysadmin a few years ago, it was mainly about maintaining good backups and optimization. There are plenty of tools for handling updates and backups. Just prepare for the added complexity if you're planning on high availability or replication—those can become a balancing act.
You might want to consider using PaaS solutions like Azure. They take care of a lot of the heavy lifting for you, freeing you up to tackle other tasks that may have a bigger impact.
Managing databases on-premises was a nightmare a few years back. I remember moving most workloads to AWS RDS for the ease of use. Patching and upgrades became much simpler. If you can, I'd recommend leveraging cloud services to avoid the hassle of manual management.
Running a self-hosted database means you'll need to set up failovers, monitoring, and replication to avoid single points of failure. Just be aware that issues can pop up at any time, especially when you're trying to sleep! Keeping track of those can be a challenge compared to managed services.
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