Move Your Workloads to the Public Cloud – Not Oracle’s
In recent years, more and more businesses – both industry leaders and up-and-comers – have decided to ditch their legacy commercial databases in favor of open source solutions like Community PostgreSQL. With constantly rising prices and increasingly restrictive licenses, Oracle and providers like it have made it challenging to execute business-critical transformation initiatives and build mission-critical applications.
Does that mean Oracle is now a thing of the past?
Since its inception, the cloud has appealed to organizations because of its incredible flexibility and promise of cost-efficiency. Unfortunately, these benefits have quickly taken a back seat with legacy providers. Enterprises that entrust their cloud architecture to Oracle are growing tired of being unable to use the tools they want, construct the infrastructure they need, or take advantage of multi and hybrid cloud strategies that could elevate their business. Now, they’re looking for an alternative in the public cloud.
There’s no avoiding it: enterprises who have found themselves entangled with licenses for Oracle’s cloud database services have rarely achieved complete control of their data – a necessity in the current business landscape.
Especially regarding third-party integrations and multi-cloud architectures, Oracle places firm and frustrating constraints on its users. As a commercial provider, it makes sense that Oracle is vested in ensuring its customers build their stack out of as many Oracle solutions as possible. If a business is looking to deploy a hybrid architecture that includes AWS or Microsoft Azure – or any other public cloud offering – Oracle has an incentive to prevent that.
Conflict with cloud providers is a fundamental problem for organizations looking to innovate, transform, and take full advantage of all the cloud offers. As a result, organizations face unavoidable restrictions that rob them of their ability to fully own their data and the essential freedom to use it in a way that best suits their aims.
Isn’t freedom the main reason you migrated to the public cloud in the first place?
That freedom defines public cloud offerings – from flexible pricing models to software compatibility to various integrations, which makes them especially friendly for architects and developers. Rather than working within the confines of a given vendor’s business model, these cloud offerings empower organizations to construct an architecture ideal for their initiatives and challenges. Postgres, in particular, has proven increasingly popular among public cloud users for its performance and extremely high availability.
The matter is simple: your data should be your data. Your cloud provider should not restrict how you use it or – even worse – charge you for access. You shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to grow and innovate or take your business to the next level.
While restrictive contracts and licensing stand in the way of organizations looking to achieve more, the public cloud encourages and facilitates creative development. When combined with open source database solutions like Postgres, a business leveraging the public cloud can make seemingly difficult, impossible things possible.
This motivated us to create EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service, our fully managed cloud Postgres solution. Available on AWS and Microsoft Azure (coming shortly to Google Cloud), EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service is designed to give enterprises the flexible options Oracle’s cloud does not. Wrestling with vendor lock-in or worrying about managerial or operational responsibilities is unnecessary. As we like to say, we focus on the database so you can focus on your business.
No matter what you want to accomplish, you deserve a cloud database that won’t hold you back. Don’t let Oracle limit the potential of your business – choose Postgres and move to the public cloud with EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service.
PostgreSQL Cloud Database Services Content and Resources
Access our resources to understand what’s possible when you move to the public cloud with EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service
What are the key benefits and features of EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service compared to AWS?
Learn how EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service optimizes Postgres database and supports multi-cloud deployments for seamless migration between different cloud environments
Find out the benefits of migrating from Oracle to EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service such as cost savings, improved performance, and enhanced global rollout capabilities
It is a PostgreSQL relational database run in a cloud environment with the aim of providing many of the same benefits as cloud computing, including increased speed, improved scalability, greater agility, and reduced costs.
PostgreSQL cloud databases are typically available in five deployment models:
- Virtual machine
PostgreSQL can be installed on virtual machines in cloud environments, providing more control over the database server and its environment. This method is suitable for users who require custom configurations not supported by fully managed services.
- Hybrid
PostgreSQL can be deployed in a hybrid environment, with some components managed on-premises and others in the cloud. This can be useful for organizations that need to keep sensitive data on-premises for compliance reasons while still benefiting from the scalability of the cloud.
- Containerized
PostgreSQL can be deployed in containerized environments using Kubernetes, which provides high availability, failover, and other cluster operations. EDB Postgres Distributed for Kubernetes is one example where PostgreSQL is deployed using a Kubernetes operator.
- Database as a Service (DBaaS)
These full managed services handle most database management tasks, such as installation, maintenance, and upgrades. This allows users to focus more on their applications rather than database operations. Examples include EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, and Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL cloud databases offer advanced security and compliance features expected of a modern cloud service, including:
- Data encryption
All data is encrypted in transit and at rest, using TLS 1.2 or higher for network traffic and AES-256 for data at rest, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access.
- Access controls
Granular access control is implemented using SSO and RBAC policies, managing user access and permissions to enhance security.
- Compliance
Many providers ensure compliance with critical standards and regulations like SOC2 Type I and II, PCI, and GDPR, which is crucial for organizations with specific regulatory requirements.
- Network isolation
Network isolation provides an additional layer of protection from unauthorized access, which is critical in preventing potential cyberattacks.
- High availability and disaster recovery
Many services offer up to 99.99% availability in disaster recovery scenarios as part of their SLA, ensuring databases remain operational and minimizing downtime and data loss.
- Monitoring and support
24/7 monitoring and support are standard, ensuring prompt identification and resolution of security issues, which is essential for maintaining database integrity and security.
Adopting PostgreSQL databases provides the opportunity to avoid vendor lock-in scenarios for a variety of reasons, including:
- Multi-cloud support
Leading Postgres solutions operate across multiple cloud service providers (CSPs), including AWS, Azure, and GCP, allowing users to deploy PostgreSQL databases in a cloud-native environment without being tied to a single provider.
- Access controls
Granular access control is implemented using SSO and RBAC policies, managing user access and permissions to enhance security.
- Open source compatibility
PostgreSQL's open source nature helps avoid proprietary technology lock-in, allowing users to benefit from flexibility and community support even when using a managed service.
- Flexible deployment options
To help avoid vendor lock-in, managed Postgres database solutions should provide users with the option to deploy their own open source database in their preferred CSP environment or a hybrid/multi-cloud environment. This keeps data isolated and under user control, reducing dependency on any single cloud vendor.
- Standardized tooling
Some solutions, like EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service, are integrated with standard cloud tools and provide a consistent user interface across CSPs, reducing the learning curve and dependency on specific vendor tools, making it easier to switch providers if needed.
That said, although users are theoretically not locked in to a particular CSP, they can find themselves practically locked in without certain vendor-agnostic features mentioned above. For example, users may be forced to use a CSP-specific API to provision databases, impacting efficiency and flexibility.
The advantages of each of the five models of PostgreSQL includes:
- Private cloud (on-premise or remote)
Private clouds give organizations full control to customize their infrastructure to meet specific performance, security, or regulatory needs. They provide enhanced security since resources aren't shared, which is crucial for handling sensitive data or strict compliance. Costs are also more predictable, usually fixed based on capacity rather than variable usage, which helps with budgeting and planning.
- Public cloud
Public clouds offer scalability, allowing PostgreSQL databases to easily scale up or down based on demand. They're cost-effective for variable workloads with a pay-as-you-go model and provide access to a wide ecosystem of integrated services and innovative tools to enhance database functionality.
- Hybrid cloud
Hybrid clouds combine the advantages of both private and public clouds, keeping sensitive data on-premises while leveraging public cloud scalability for non-sensitive applications. This mitigates single points of failure, ensures higher availability and helps meet regulatory requirements.
- Multi cloud
Using multiple clouds can prevent vendor lock-in, allowing organizations to choose the best services and pricing from different providers. This approach optimizes operations, reduces downtime risks, and enhances business resilience by not relying on a single cloud provider.
- Polycloud
Polycloud lets organizations use specialized services from different providers when their unique capabilities are best for specific PostgreSQL management tasks. This harnesses each provider's strengths for efficiency, performance, and a competitive edge. For instance, one cloud could be used to gather and process IoT data, while another handles complex analytics.
Yes, most PostgreSQL cloud databases offer automatic scaling, a feature that dynamically adjusts resources based on workload demands. This capability ensures optimal performance while maintaining cost efficiency, making it easier for developers to manage and scale their databases without manual intervention.
Cloud providers generally ensure data durability and availability through a range of backup and recovery features. These include automated backups, which regularly create snapshots of your database; point-in-time recovery, which allows you to restore your database to a specific timestamp; and streamlined replication setups, which enable easy creation of database replicas for high availability and disaster recovery purposes.
PostgreSQL cloud databases can match or surpass on-premise deployments, depending on the configuration and the cloud provider's infrastructure.
Cloud-based deployments allow developers to dynamically adjust performance settings and scale resources to optimize application performance. However, they remain vulnerable to factors like network connectivity and multi-tenant workloads, which can impact performance.
To ensure a successful migration, developers should assess their performance needs, evaluate the provider's SLAs and infrastructure, and thoroughly test the chosen configuration.
Many cloud providers offer various tools and services to simplify the migration of existing databases to the cloud. For example, EDB’s Migration Portal assesses Oracle database compatibility with EDB Postgres Advanced Server (EPAS), while the EDB Migration Toolkit helps migrate smaller databases from Oracle, PostgreSQL, or EPAS to EDB Postgres® AI Cloud Service.
More sophisticated migrations can leverage tools like EDB Replication Server, which is an asynchronous replication system that enables data replication between PostgreSQL databases or from non-PostgreSQL databases to PostgreSQL.
Most DBaaS products offer a comprehensive set of security features, including automatic encryption for data at rest and in transit, support for customer-managed encryption keys, database authentication via Cloud IAM, network access controls through VPC, and configurable firewall settings.
That said, while many DBaaS providers adhere to security standards and privacy regulations like SOC, PCI, GDPR, and HIPAA, organizations with highly sensitive data or stringent compliance needs may find the lack of direct control over data storage and management in DBaaS challenging.