Managed databases

A managed database is provisioned rather than built. You choose an engine, a size and a region, and get an instance with scheduled backups, live metrics and a browser-based editor.

4 min read

Available engines

Engine	Typically used as
PostgreSQL	Primary relational store
MySQL	Primary relational store
Redis	Cache, queue, session store

Creating a database

Choose New service → Database.

The new database form, with name, engine, connection details and size, and a summary panel showing the estimated cost — Name, engine and size. The credentials are generated for you.

You provide:

Engine and version.
Name. How the database appears in the project.
Region. Put it in the same region as the services that read it. A database can't change region later.
Size. Databases have their own tiers. Dev is the smallest paid size: enough for a small production app, with the same automatic backups as the larger sizes, which add CPU, memory and disk. You can move up later from the database's settings. PostgreSQL, Redis and Valkey also have a Free size (one free database per workspace). MySQL, MariaDB and MongoDB need about 1 GB just to start, so they begin at Dev.

Database name, user and password can be left blank to be generated. Generated credentials are strong and unique, which is what you want unless you are migrating and need to match an existing configuration.

Put the database in the same region as the app that queries it. Applications make many queries per request, so a cross-region database multiplies the network cost by the number of queries. See Instance types & regions.

The overview

Once provisioned, the database's overview shows what it is, how it is doing and how much room is left.

A database overview showing its engine, its connection details, and charts for CPU, open connections and storage used — Connection details, with CPU, connections and storage below.

Two numbers to keep an eye on:

Connections, against the instance's limit. Exhausting connections is the most common production database failure, and it usually means the application is opening connections per request instead of using a pool.
Storage, against the size included with the tier.

Private by default

Databases are provisioned to be reachable by your own services, not published to the internet. A PostgreSQL database can also get a public endpoint for clients outside Naijacloud, but it stays off until you turn it on, and you can limit it to specific IP addresses. A database open to any address only needs one leaked password to become someone else's.

See Connecting to a database for how your services reach it, and how to connect from your own machine.

Related: Backups & restore.