Cloud Database

A cloud database is a database made available as a managed service running on a cloud computing platform rather than on hardware the operator owns and maintains directly. A user can provision a database instance from a virtual machine image and manage it much like an on premises system, or subscribe to a fully managed service where the provider handles scaling, replication, patching and backup, and the user pays only for the capacity actually consumed. Cloud databases span both the relational and NoSQL data models rather than belonging to either one exclusively, and their on demand elasticity, built in geographic replication and reduced operational burden have made them a common deployment choice for new applications since the middle of the 2010s onward.