Item: IBM Cloud Databases
Rating: 7
Author: Leo van Snippenburg

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use IBM Compose as a backend database (MongoDB) for several of our cloud services. As a hosted MongoDB service Compose allows us to run complex systems without spending a lot of time on system setup and maintenance. Backups and fault tolerance are directly available, both for production and for development databases. As an extra, security of the databases is well covered. The nuisance of IBM Compose is that it is at least a few versions behind the official MongoDB releases. This means we cannot directly use the latest features.

Pros and Cons

Easy to set up
Good tools for (local) backups
Great monitoring
API available

More frequent updates

Return on Investment

Easy deployment
Low/no training cost
Good performance

Alternatives Considered

We use Amazon's RDS (MySQL database), Redislabs (Redis) and also MongoDB's Atlas. They all have their own advantages and disadvantages. For us, MongoDB's Atlas and Compose are obviously similar services. For now, we use Atlas to try new things (since they run the latest stable releases of MongoDB) and use Compose as a production database.

Other Software Used

Amazon Relational Database Service, MongoDB, Redis Cloud, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Google App Engine, Docker

Likelihood to Recommend

From development to production Compose can be useful. We have only used the MongoDB services, but the other possibilities (MySQL, Redis) have certainly not been left unnoticed. We have just already hosted these services at other places.

Real live with Compose

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Databases