Overview
Exoscale’s Database as a Service (DBaaS) enables you to quickly deploy fully managed data stores on demand. Our service is supported by enterprise-grade automation, ensures European data residency, and offers clusters with up to 99.99% uptime Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
Architecture
Exoscale DBaaS provisions dedicated virtual machines per service; no compute resources are shared across organizations, and the servers never appear in your public instance list — they live behind a managed endpoint that Exoscale operates for you. Each plan changes how many of those isolated nodes are launched (single-node for Hobbyist/Startup, multi-node clusters for Business/Premium).
Under the hood, a European control plane (powered by our partner Aiven) orchestrates day-to-day operations: creation, daily backups, automated fail-over, rolling upgrades, and health checks. Traffic between nodes and to the object storage is encrypted, and all data remains inside the zone-country you selected.
Because every service has dedicated VMs, you can resize, fork, or terminate it without affecting any other customer. After internal fail-over, the endpoint’s DNS name stays the same, so clients only need basic reconnect logic.
Note
Use the plan naming scheme (<tier>-<nodes>x?-<memory>) to know instantly
how many dedicated nodes and RAM each deployment receives.
Naming Conventions
A DBaaS plan name tells you three key facts about the service without opening a table:
| Segment | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Tier | premium | Redundancy & backup profile (Hobbyist —> Premium) |
| Node Count | 9x | Number of nodes in the cluster (omitted on single-node plans) |
| RAM per Node | 16 | Memory in GB for each node; aligns with Exoscale Compute flavors |
Reading a Plan
premium-9x-16 —> Premium-tier cluster, 9 nodes, 16 GB RAM each.
Tier Quick Reference
- Hobbyist single node, basic SLA, hourly backup (1 copy)
- Startup single node, hourly + rolling 3-day daily backups
- Business 2 nodes, hourly + 14-day retention, 99.99 % SLA
- Premium 3 nodes, hourly + 30-day retention, 99.99 % SLA
Details (CPU, storage, price) live in the DBaaS plan tables.
Why the Pattern?
The scheme is shared by all engines (pg, mysql, kafka, opensearch, valkey, grafana, thanos) so teams can:
- Spot Capacity larger last number = more RAM
- Spot Resilience higher tier = more replicas/backups
- Compare Costs same tier & size behave similarly across zones
Note
when creating or updating a service via CLI/API, the plan-string is the only argument
you need to switch hardware, redundancy or price class.
Service Levels
Each DBaaS plan has a guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) for high availability and reliability.
- Hobbyist and Startup plans provide 99.95% availability
- Business and Premium plans provide 99.99% availability
The SLA applies to the uptime and responsiveness of the managed database services. It ensures that services remain accessible and functional according to enterprise-grade standards. Failures beyond this threshold are eligible for compensation as defined in the Exoscale’s SLAs.
Note
The SLA applies only to the service infrastructure and not to user data, applications, or queries running on the databases.
Terminology
- Exoscale DBaaS
- A managed database as a service provided by Exoscale, which allows users to deploy and manage databases without managing the underlying infrastructure.
- Plans
- Exoscale offers various plans for their DBaaS solutions, including Hobbyist, Startup, Business, and Premium, each catering to different workload requirements and scales.
- Database Forking
- Available in some plans, allowing users to create a duplicate of a database for testing or development purposes without affecting the production environment.
- Dedicated Instances
- All Exoscale managed databases run on dedicated instances, ensuring resources are not shared with other clients, which improves performance and security.
- Volume Size
- Refers to the storage capacity allocated for a database instance, which varies depending on the plan and can be adjusted to match the application needs.
- Max Connections
- The maximum number of connections a database can handle at any time, which is set according to the chosen plan.
- Data Replication
- Exoscale ensures data replication within its infrastructure to maintain data integrity and availability.
- Daily Backups
- All plans include daily backups, securing data and providing a restore point in the case of failure or data loss.
- Zones
- Exoscale DBaaS solutions are available across multiple zones, providing options for geographic distribution and high availability.
Features
- Managed Lifecycle
- provisioning, patching, auto-healing and upgrades are handled by Exoscale.
- Automated Backups
- daily encrypted backups retained per-plan policy; point-in-time-recovery available on engines that support it.
- High Availability Options
- from single-node Hobbyist to multi-node Premium clusters with synchronous replication.
- Security by Design
- services are isolated on dedicated instances and reachable only via TLS-encrypted endpoints; IP filters control ingress.
- Automation
- full API & CLI coverage, plus Terraform provider
- SLAs
- Startup & Hobbyist 99.95 %, Business & Premium 99.99 %.