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Couchbase Capella brings new managed DBaaS capabilities

The NoSQL database vendor launched a DBaaS platform providing a fully managed cloud database aimed at users who don't want to manage their own resources.

Couchbase on Oct. 19 made generally available for AWS its new Capella cloud database-as-a-service platform as a new option for cloud database deployment.

Couchbase is no stranger to the DBaaS market and has had a Couchbase Cloud offering since February 2020.

The NoSQL database vendor is positioning the Couchbase Capella service as a new option that is initially only available on AWS, with plans to add other public cloud vendors in the future.

With Couchbase Capella, the database is fully managed, including the underlying cloud infrastructure resources, while the original Couchbase Cloud required users to be more hands-on in managing resources.

Couchbase has been steadily growing its database capabilities in recent months, with the latest Couchbase 7.0 update providing users with relational database capabilities as the vendor looks to branch out.

With Couchbase Capella, the vendor is going after a particular user base, said  Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady.

"Broadly speaking, Couchbase is focused on making the service more flexible and accessible to developers," O'Grady said. "The appetite for managed database services is skyrocketing, but besides offering the flexibility of a multi-language, multi-modal offering that does the heavy lifting for them, doing seemingly little things like making the signup process that lowers the friction for developers can make a big difference."

Screenshot of Couchbase Capella
Couchbase Capella has an integrated query editor to help users fine-tune database queries.

Couchbase Capella brings a fully managed DBaaS to market

Ravi Mayuram, senior vice president of engineering and CTO at Couchbase, explained that the existing Couchbase Cloud provided organizations with the flexibility to provision their own cloud infrastructure.

Some enterprises prefer to have the ability to provision cloud resources because they already have relationships with cloud vendors and are deploying virtual private cloud resources.

Couchbase Capella takes a different approach, in which the infrastructure as a service is also bundled in with the service to provide a fully managed DBaaS.

"So you just get the database output instead of fretting about where you want to provision infrastructure," Mayuram said.

Broadly speaking, Couchbase is focused on making the service more flexible and accessible to developers.
Stephen O'GradyAnalyst, Redmonk

Couchbase is also optimizing how the infrastructure is deployed to help the Capella service with replication and storage. Mayuram explained that Couchbase Capella provides data that is being managed by the service, as opposed to a database built on top of storage infrastructure that someone else controls.

Control for memory optimization

Couchbase has also optimized how memory in the Capella service works to improve database performance.

Mayuram explained that typically databases are disk-based, with data loaded into memory from storage as queries are executed.

Couchbase by design can enable users to run as much, or as little, of the database entirely in memory as they want. With Couchbase Capella, the mix of memory to storage is managed by the service and can be adjusted by users as required.

"This is what actually cloud is really good at, giving users elastic capacity," Mayuram said.

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