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IBM Cloud Databases

IBM Cloud Databases

Overview

What is IBM Cloud Databases?

IBM Cloud Databases are open source data stores for enterprise application development. Built on a Kubernetes foundation, they offer a database platform for serverless applications. They are designed to scale storage and compute resources seamlessly without being constrained by the…

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 6 features
  • Database security provisions (83)
    8.6
    86%
  • Database scalability (87)
    8.3
    83%
  • Automated backups (90)
    7.1
    71%
  • Monitoring and metrics (87)
    5.5
    55%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is IBM Cloud Databases?

IBM Cloud Databases are open source data stores for enterprise application development. Built on a Kubernetes foundation, they offer a database platform for serverless applications. They are designed to scale storage and compute resources seamlessly without being constrained by the limits of a…

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  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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SAP HANA is an application that uses in-memory database technology to process very large amounts of real-time data from relational databases, both SAP and non-SAP, in a very short time. The in-memory computing engine allows HANA to process data stored in RAM as opposed to reading it from a disk…

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Features

Database-as-a-Service

Database as a Service (DBaaS) software, sometimes referred to as cloud database software, is the delivery of database services ocer the Internet as a service

7.4
Avg 8.7
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Product Details

What is IBM Cloud Databases?

IBM Cloud Databases are open source data stores for enterprise application development. Built on a Kubernetes foundation, they offer a database platform for serverless applications. They are designed to scale storage and compute resources seamlessly without being constrained by the limits of a single server. Natively integrated and available in the IBM Cloud console, these databases are now available through a consistent consumption, pricing, and interaction model. They aim to provide a cohesive experience for developers that include access control, backup orchestration, encryption key management, auditing, monitoring, and logging.

List of available databases
IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL
IBM Cloud Databases for MongoDB
IBM Cloud Databases for Redis
IBM Cloud Databases for EnterpriseDB(EDB)
IBM Cloud Databases for Elasticsearch
IBM Cloud Databases for etcd
IBM Cloud Messages for Rabbit MQ

IBM Cloud Databases Features

Database-as-a-Service Features

  • Supported: Automatic software patching
  • Supported: Database scalability
  • Supported: Automated backups
  • Supported: Database security provisions
  • Supported: Monitoring and metrics
  • Supported: Automatic host deployment

IBM Cloud Databases Video

Introduction to IBM Cloud Databases

IBM Cloud Databases Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Google Cloud SQL, Azure Database, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) are common alternatives for IBM Cloud Databases.

Reviewers rate Database security provisions highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of IBM Cloud Databases are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(234)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Dominik Hurnaus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a young startup we wanted to focus on our core product and not be held back by infrastructure management and maintenance. This is why we moved our RabbitMQ and (persistent) Redis clusters to compose.io. We no longer have to provide servers, maintenance, monitoring, etc. for those parts of our infrastructure.
  • Robust Redis and RabbitMQ clusters with no downtime within the last 18 months.
  • With RabbitMQ, putting special policies on specific queues was not possible via the admin interface and required contacting their support (The support guys promptly configured those policies, though).
I would definitely recommend using IBM Compose for secondary storage systems or message queues, as the price-performance ratio is unbeatable. We compared quite a few providers and the price-performance ratio with IBM Compose was by far the best.
Database-as-a-Service (6)
60%
6.0
Automatic software patching
90%
9.0
Database scalability
100%
10.0
Automated backups
100%
10.0
Database security provisions
N/A
N/A
Monitoring and metrics
70%
7.0
Automatic host deployment
N/A
N/A
  • We no longer have to maintain, upgrade, or deal with downtime of our own Redis and RabbitMQ clusters. In hindsight it feels strange to have ever had self-hosted clusters for those services (where in our case additional latency of a few milliseconds is acceptable).
We previously hosted our own Redis and RabbitMQ cluster. Before switching to IBM Compose we evaluated Redis Lab, Scalegrid, AWS ElastiCache, CloudAMQP and others. We still host our core database (MongoDB) ourselves.
We did not require any premium support yet.
No
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We need managed MongoDB service.
  • Simplifies/eliminate the need to administer database services
  • Scalability when you need it, very easy to increase service limit/size/etc.
  • Easy out of the box backups
  • Cost for smaller deployments. Running minimal instances of redis, mongo, postgresql costs more than ordering a simple VM and installing youself.
  • Managed services sometimes lack plugins (eg custom postgresql, rabbitmq extensions for specialized tasks).
If you need fast/simple scalable and redundant setup for postgres/rabbitmq, Compose is much simpler than building a similar solution on your own.
Database-as-a-Service (6)
95%
9.5
Automatic software patching
100%
10.0
Database scalability
100%
10.0
Automated backups
100%
10.0
Database security provisions
100%
10.0
Monitoring and metrics
70%
7.0
Automatic host deployment
100%
10.0
  • Allowed us to quickly setup PoC demo environment of a platform of ours
Solr was not available on Compose and had to be hosted internally
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
compatibility with the rest if the IBM cloud ecosystem
  • eliminating some unsupported third party extensions
there are user interfaces allowing most of the functions to be performed
  • connecting IBM cloud deployed system
  • there aren’t really such functions
we have not used support
all parts of our organization use it
3
  • previous experience with installation and configuration of postgres
  • previous experience with installation and configuration of mongodb
  • storing relational business data
  • storing non relational analytics data
  • there aren’t really unexpected ways
  • to migrate other parts if our infrastructure, e.g rabbitMQ
it is really easy to use and reliable service at good price
Yes
internally hosted db servers
no, we are satisfied
No
we have our own specialists to handle this situations
No
we have not used support for this product
February 23, 2019

Compose Review

Joshua Dickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Compose extensively to host our application's database layer which is implemented in MongoDB. MongoDB from Compose helps us in two ways: first of all, it removed significant overhead in having to think about monitoring and maintaining our database systems. Compose also has excellent GIU tools (though they can be a bit slow with large queries) for working with MongoDB.
  • Database-Interaction GUI best we've worked with
  • Service has been reliable
  • Pricing Is low enough to not think about hosting our own DB layer
  • Customer service has been lacking at times
  • Technical issues: backups have not always happened on schedule, and customer data has been lost
  • Pricing for follow-on GBs is high
It very much depends on use case. For cases with small DBs, or for cases where ease of management is more important than cost, it's a great option. It's also a great starter for people who have not used Mongo and can make use of the GUI tools.
Database-as-a-Service (6)
40%
4.0
Automatic software patching
N/A
N/A
Database scalability
N/A
N/A
Automated backups
30%
3.0
Database security provisions
70%
7.0
Monitoring and metrics
70%
7.0
Automatic host deployment
70%
7.0
  • Removed man-hours from managing database layer
  • Low-cost for small databases
  • Have not had to think about investing in scaling DB layer
We evaluated several DBaaS providers, the thing that won out for Compose was its GUI which makes working with the database very easy.
No
We use IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose) more on starter and green-fields type projects, because it's very simple to spin up new database instances and the cost profile is acceptable. At larger database sizes, Compose/IBM's pricing has always been prohibitively expensive for hosting. With hosting being that expensive, we look elsewhere for actually deploying more production-oriented workloads in the cloud, and choose to pay for support with those providers.
Support is helpful enough, but we haven't always had questions answered in a satisfactory manner. At one time we realized that Compose had stopped taking database snapshots on its two-per-day schedule, and had in fact not taken one for many days. Support recognized the problem and it was fixed, but the lack of proactive checks and the inability to share exactly what happened has caused us to look elsewhere for production work loads.
No
Unlike with other vendors, I never felt as though I received exceptional support from Compose / IBM Cloud Databases.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organisation is a fairly-young startup, which is in the business of producing and selling SaaS/web-based software solutions to organisations.

IBM Compose PostgreSQL serves as the main data store for serving our cloud-based application and storing customer data.
  • It is easy to use and get started (being a standard PostgreSQL implementation).
  • Databases autoscale in terms of storage size and resources (based on this size). We haven't had the chance to see this in action as yet though.
  • The Asia/Pacific region is included in the list of hosting datacentres which is required for us.
  • Initial pricing is low and generally well-suited to startups.
  • At-rest encryption of databases apparently is only available for Enterprise subscriptions, which are v expensive and suited to large organisations. To satisfy general security requirements (eg mandatory for Govt-based customers) we need to encrypt any potentially-sensitive data before inserting into the database (which then cannot be queried-against). This is likely to become a bigger issue for us soon.
  • The Compose admin console has been pending migration to IBM's cloud portal for a long time, and do not match the original Compose.io site. The IBM cloud portal is also fairly slow for us.
  • Support tickets (with the basic-free support tier) raised against IBM for PostgreSQL questions/issues generally take a long time to answer (typically several days).
As per the previous answers, I believe it is well suited to smaller organisations that do not require at-rest encryption of data; or possibly larger organisations using the Enterprise subscription.
We were disappointed by slow response times from IBM support when assistance was required; the IBM portal and support experience; I believe IBM need to catch up to provide support and an experience which is not a downgrade of what Compose.io provides.
Database-as-a-Service (6)
71.66666666666667%
7.2
Automatic software patching
80%
8.0
Database scalability
80%
8.0
Automated backups
80%
8.0
Database security provisions
50%
5.0
Monitoring and metrics
70%
7.0
Automatic host deployment
70%
7.0
  • PostgreSQL has allowed us to quickly provide a Minimal Viable Product for our cloud-based software offering.
While using IBM Bluemix to host our SaaS product in the Asia/Pacific region, PostgreSQL suited us for integrating well with IBM Cloud, and also being available within the same geographic region.

Other products that we looked at: ElephantSQL provides At-Rest encryption, but this is not currently available within Asia/Pacific (at the subscription level containing the feature). We also had issues contacting ElephantSQL support.
IBM Watson Analytics, IBM Cloud PaaS (formerly IBM Bluemix - PaaS)
No
As a business startup, the monthly support expense is too high.
Very slow response times and the responses have often not been satisfactory.
No
No
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company operates with the Industrial IoT, we deliver a turnkey solution for connected vehicles to our clients which are operating within the automotive ecosystem - like repair shops, insurance companies, fleet owners etc. We use different products from the IBM Compose range as listed:
  • IBM Compose RabbitMQ as a backbone for message exchange of our micro-services.
  • IBM Compose for Mongo DB - we use using hosted Mongo database for storing entities like users, tokens, sessions, etc. We use it because of the flexibility for future modification and ease of use.
  • IBM Compose for Scylla - We store data coming from the vehicles. - Just recently - Redis - for caching in our API products.
  • You can be up and running within minutes.
  • Being a managed database, things like backups, recovering, etc. So we dont have to spend much resources on securing those.
  • Proactive support
  • Smaller staring tier for Scylla DB, that will allow smaller companies like ours to on-board easily.
Every organization that doesn't want to invest time and money in database infrastructure or setting one up themselves.
Database-as-a-Service (4)
70%
7.0
Automatic software patching
50%
5.0
Database scalability
80%
8.0
Automated backups
100%
10.0
Monitoring and metrics
50%
5.0
  • Positive - we went from idea to market within a 6 month period, partly because we leveraged managed storage solutions like IBM compose
Being part of IBM Global Entrepreneur program, it was the obvious choice.
3
Software developer, software development interns, CTO
Since compose is managed storage solution and the support offered is great, software developers are sufficiently proficient to explain the issues and get them resolved using the help of the IBM compose support
  • IoT data storage - Scylla
  • Administration database - Mongo
  • Cache - Redis
  • Developed our own caching solution
  • We would use Redis database as a way for storing real time device data and displaying it to the users.
I am very fond of the features and reliability of the compose DaaS, however I could switch if I find same qualities for lower price.
Yes
We previously utilized mLAB mongo database solution for storing entity data and also datapoints from our fleet of devices, that was replaced by the IBM Compose for Mongo and we switched to scylla for our device data.
  • Price
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
We got access to IBM compose as part of IBM GE program, that allowed us to utilize IBM Compose DaaS for free, that played a significant role in decision process to switch.
For a small starting company like ours its extremely important to have a reliably working solution, that also makes economical sense. In that regard, I would not change in our decision process. Reputation and price are on top.
No
The current support is good enough and reponsive.
The support is fast, knowledgeable, but I would like to see an addition of how a certain event could have affect my application.
No
The time that our RabbitMQ cluster needed to go up in memory: As engineers we sometimes cut corners to fast troubleshoot a problems. That happened to my team as one of my developers made an extra queue in RabbitMQ and then forgot about it, the queue grew quickly and one of the nodes was running out of memory, hence crashing, the Compose team came in and automatically scaled the MQ for us while notifying us for the problem. At the end they saved the day.
  • Deploying DaaS
  • Backups
  • The fact that the administration dashboards for Rabbit MQ for example uses port different than 80, that could be blocked in some organizations.
No
It is great the only things I have stumbled upon is the non standard port 80 they use and sometimes expired SSL certificate.
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