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While I agree with you, the answer is that some people don't want to manage the DB. This means patching the OS, patching the database, and making backups (with

While I agree with you, the answer is that some people don't want to manage the DB. This means patching the OS, patching the database, and making backups (with reasonable disaster recovery). While you could do all of this, many ask, "How much of my time will be spent DevOp'ing (like learning how to do it and then executing)?" If the number of hours is over some threshold, they might prefer to pay someone to do all of that.

antisthenes 4y ago
If they don't want to do any of that, spin up an SQLite db on a local machine and sync it to Google Drive (or equivalent). It's free, probably faster in many cases and several times simpler than any alternative.
mekster 4y ago
I think people tend to overthink about running your own db. There is nothing to patch manually. Security updates are handled automatically via "unattended-upgrades" for Ubuntu and when the OP says, > tiny, almost free, sql database for personal projects running "mysqldump" on a cron job sounds enough to me. > with reasonable disaster recovery You may send that dump file to any S3 based storage anywhere in the world for a decent disaster recovery. (Tools like restic allows automatic data rotation easily.) Launching an instance (even use "MySQL" app instance cloud providers provide) and installing MySQL with 1 command, write a few lines of shell script to take a daily backup should take at most an hour. Optionally, install Caddy web server and set up a few lines for PHP fpm or for other languages a single line to reverse proxy for automatic Let's Encrypt and your site is up. I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials on that. Once things are up, there's nothing to manage. It gives you flexibility with lower price, not to mention gives you the little knowledge you likely want to have down the road.
- rawoke083600 4y ago
  100% agree ! When did "running your own db" became such a code-smell !? Sure at the higher of traffic and usage you might want to outsource, but it's stupidly easy to get reasonable performance and security with the defaults or the most basic of configs. You can actually learn a lot about db's (and become a better user of the db) by actually knowing what some of the configs do as well.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    running your own db is not a code smell, it's a productivity smell if you're a one/two person startup - are you so good at running your own db that the people a cloud provider would put on the job would be definitely and probably significantly worse at it than you? If so, keep on with it, if not maybe consider if you can afford to have someone do it for you.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - true_religion 4y ago
      If like the original poster, I want to spend less than 15 dollars a month then I would be forced to run my own DB. If price is predominant you have to do it yourself. I am not the OP but I setup a fairly expensive server to run my Postgres,redis,and other fire and forget processes. Now, five years later, I have never once had to login to change anything. And thanks to that I saved thousands of dollars versus what I would have paid for a managed systems of the same performance so I could do all kinds of wild experimental projects that would’ve otherwise been too expensive. The uptime has been phenomenal. We would have hit 5 years uptime, except briefly the data center caught fire resulting in a few hours of downtime.
      - rawoke083600 4y ago
        This !
    - rawoke083600 4y ago
      >are you so good at running your own db that the people a cloud provider would put on the job would be definitely and probably significantly worse at it than you? Most of the time, I don't need to be as good or better then the cloud provider. I just need to "be good enough".
jefurii 4y ago
Ansible. Every morning I run two commands that are wrappers around "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" that upgrade the entire fleet of servers I manage. They're the same two commands every morning and they're in my bash history. It's really not that hard.
- mekster 4y ago
  You don't need to do that if you're satisfied with the current version. It rarely breaks but mostly it doesn't give you anything unless you needed the specific new version. Just keep unattended-upgrades do the important updates without any manual labors.

antisthenes 4y ago

If they don't want to do any of that, spin up an SQLite db on a local machine and sync it to Google Drive (or equivalent). It's free, probably faster in many cases and several times simpler than any alternative.

mekster 4y ago

I think people tend to overthink about running your own db. There is nothing to patch manually. Security updates are handled automatically via "unattended-upgrades" for Ubuntu and when the OP says, > tiny, almost free, sql database for personal projects running "mysqldump" on a cron job sounds enough to me. > with reasonable disaster recovery You may send that dump file to any S3 based storage anywhere in the world for a decent disaster recovery. (Tools like restic allows automatic data rotation easily.) Launching an instance (even use "MySQL" app instance cloud providers provide) and installing MySQL with 1 command, write a few lines of shell script to take a daily backup should take at most an hour. Optionally, install Caddy web server and set up a few lines for PHP fpm or for other languages a single line to reverse proxy for automatic Let's Encrypt and your site is up. I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials on that. Once things are up, there's nothing to manage. It gives you flexibility with lower price, not to mention gives you the little knowledge you likely want to have down the road.

rawoke083600 4y ago
100% agree ! When did "running your own db" became such a code-smell !? Sure at the higher of traffic and usage you might want to outsource, but it's stupidly easy to get reasonable performance and security with the defaults or the most basic of configs. You can actually learn a lot about db's (and become a better user of the db) by actually knowing what some of the configs do as well.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  running your own db is not a code smell, it's a productivity smell if you're a one/two person startup - are you so good at running your own db that the people a cloud provider would put on the job would be definitely and probably significantly worse at it than you? If so, keep on with it, if not maybe consider if you can afford to have someone do it for you.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - true_religion 4y ago
    If like the original poster, I want to spend less than 15 dollars a month then I would be forced to run my own DB. If price is predominant you have to do it yourself. I am not the OP but I setup a fairly expensive server to run my Postgres,redis,and other fire and forget processes. Now, five years later, I have never once had to login to change anything. And thanks to that I saved thousands of dollars versus what I would have paid for a managed systems of the same performance so I could do all kinds of wild experimental projects that would’ve otherwise been too expensive. The uptime has been phenomenal. We would have hit 5 years uptime, except briefly the data center caught fire resulting in a few hours of downtime.
    - rawoke083600 4y ago
      This !
  - rawoke083600 4y ago
    >are you so good at running your own db that the people a cloud provider would put on the job would be definitely and probably significantly worse at it than you? Most of the time, I don't need to be as good or better then the cloud provider. I just need to "be good enough".

jefurii 4y ago

Ansible. Every morning I run two commands that are wrappers around "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" that upgrade the entire fleet of servers I manage. They're the same two commands every morning and they're in my bash history. It's really not that hard.

mekster 4y ago
You don't need to do that if you're satisfied with the current version. It rarely breaks but mostly it doesn't give you anything unless you needed the specific new version. Just keep unattended-upgrades do the important updates without any manual labors.