The best option if you want to move to production fast, while keeping your data safe and always available
March 09, 2018

The best option if you want to move to production fast, while keeping your data safe and always available

Alfred Reinold Baudisch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IBM Compose

We were using Compose PostgreSQL and Compose Redis as the data source for all of our stack. We have a messaging sequencer platform, a bot engine platform and Compose Redis was used as a session store and message sequencer and PostgreSQL as the transactional and permanent store.

Pros

  • Instant setup: configuring and setting up a production environment for PostgreSQL can be an expensive and time consuming task, with Compose we just clicked "new instance".
  • Backups: same as instant setup - no need to worry about creating a backup flow. Backups are always available in the Compose dashboard and also accessible via an API for additional storage (i.e. move to S3)
  • High Availability: harder than setting up backup and monitoring, is setting up HA for PostgreSQL, since it doesn't have it out of the box, and there aren't official tools. Compose abstracts the setup putting multiple instances behind HAProxy, and your application doesn't even have to worry about changing instances.
  • Scaling

Cons

  • Better cost reports, before just increasing to another tier, thus increasing the price. This is critical for early stage startups, where budget is tight.
  • Add more data center options. As a comparison, a similar service, Aiven.io has dozen more options than Compose (basically all big cloud providers). We moved from AWS to Digital Ocean, which made us stop using Compose, since Compose forces us to be either on IBM or AWS.
  • Instant production environment data setup, without the need to invest days preparing the setup. Immediate positive ROI on this.
  • Negative impact: we had to use a more expensive cloud provider (AWS), because Compose wasn't present in Digital Ocean (cheaper and transparent). After some time, we stopped using Compose because we moved back to Digital Ocean.
  • Aiven
Aiven backup options are very limited (you can't download backups and you don't have an API) and their dashboard is incomplete and without an optimal design; but they accept way more data centers, and they have more pricing options.
Well suited:
  • Quick launch of a product into a production environment.
  • Cutting the neeed for a dedicated DBA/devops focused on the DB.
Less appropriate: When you have a very tight budget. Stick to setting up instances manually, without HA, etc.

IBM Cloud Databases Feature Ratings

Automatic software patching
10
Database scalability
10
Automated backups
10
Database security provisions
10
Monitoring and metrics
7
Automatic host deployment
10

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