Nectar Database Service

What is the Nectar database service?

The Nectar database service is a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) system powered by the Trove OpenStack project. It provides a simple interface to manage databases whilst hiding the underlying infrastructural requirements of configuring and running them. The Nectar database service offers the benefit of API or web based access for tasks like creating and restoring backups, adding and removing users and more.

The Nectar database service offers:

• MySQL and PostgreSQL datastore support.
• All user and database related operations: For instance, it allows you to add users and databases to your instance through the Trove API and dashboard.
• Database backups, stored in Nectar object storage. Both incremental and non-incremental backups are supported. (NOTE: We currently do not support incremental backups with PostgrSQL 16).
  

Available datastores

The datastores currently available are:

• MySQL, version 8.0
• PostgreSQL, version 16

Available flavors

The flavors currently available are:

• db3.small (4 GB RAM)
• db3.medium (8 GB RAM)
• db3.large (16 GB RAM)

Database service quota

Access to the Nectar database service is governed by its own type of quota and you can request this through an Allocation Request form. The Resource Bundles include pre-specified values for database RAM and database instance storage, as indicated in the Resource Bundle Table. If you select the Custom Resource Bundle, you can specify your own resource request.

The Custom Resource Bundle allows you to request quota for:

• Database RAM
• Database storage

You can apply for specific quota for either RAM or storage, or both, depending on your requirements.

Database size and performance limitations

The Nectar database service is configured to limit Database instances to at most 1 TB of database disk storage. This is for a couple of reasons:

• The Nectar Database service implements backups by means of the Volume Storage Backup service.  There are practical limits on the size of volumes that can be backed up.  (The issue is that there is only a limited amount of local disk storage on the server for staging backups.)
• Getting large databases to perform well requires a lot of tuning, and in some cases specialized hardware.

If you need to implement a database larger than the 1 TB limit, we suggest that you request quota for Volume storage and a Compute service instance, and then install, configure and tune database software to suit your needs. You may also find that Volume storage does not perform well enough for you. In that case, we suggest you talk to your local Node staff to see if they can provide special hardware for you.

Database service tutorial

Once you have been assigned some Database service quota, we recommend you work through the Nectar Database service tutorial to familiarize yourself with the service and how it works.