Open and Portable Postgres-as-a-Service

Ubicloud has recently made an exciting announcement in the world of Managed PostgreSQL solutions. They are introducing an open and portable Postgres-as-a-Service, available on Hetzner as their initial offering. This new service aims to provide an open source alternative to the closed-source competition, with the control plane being made open using the Elastic v2 license.

While some users expressed frustration with the use of the term “open” in relation to the Elastic v2 license, others defended the necessity of such licenses in the business landscape. They believe that it is important for companies offering hosted versions of open source projects to protect their interests and prevent the dominance of black box cloud-only services.

Ubicloud addressed the concerns and assured users that they have their best interests in mind. They emphasized that any re-licensing in the future would be in favor of the users and that they are committed to providing a fair and open environment.

Key Features and Support

One user inquired about the ease of changing specifications in the service, such as the number of vCPUs, RAM, and disk size. Ubicloud clarified that while resizing instances after provisioning is currently a manual operation, they plan to automate it in the future. They also mentioned that multiple databases can be created per instance, and support for popular extensions like PostGIS and pgvector is in the pipeline.

The question of integrating with file storage and blob storage was raised, to which Ubicloud suggested leveraging a virtual machine to fetch or send data. They also highlighted their automatic backup feature, with point-in-time recovery available to the minute. Additionally, there is the ability to “fork” a database from a past point in time, which is useful for development, testing, and analytics purposes.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing is a key consideration for users when evaluating managed database solutions. There was some confusion regarding the pricing details, with one user highlighting the discrepancy between the pricing mentioned in the documentation and on the landing page. Ubicloud acknowledged the need for better presentation of their pricing information and clarified that the first link provided was for VM pricing, while the second link was for managed database instances with higher disk capacity.

Expansion and Future Plans

Ubicloud received positive feedback from users about their offering and expressed interest in expanding to more regions, especially US-East. Users were particularly excited about the potential for cross-vendor cloud deployments and the availability of Ubicloud on Hetzner.

In response to questions about inter-region egress fees and latency, it was clarified that Hetzner has locations in Ashburn, Virginia, and Hillsboro, Oregon, and that Ubicloud will soon be available in the US. This will likely alleviate concerns about egress fees and ensure low-latency connectivity.

Furthermore, there were discussions about the possibility of introducing a cross-vendor object storage offering. This was seen as a highly requested service on Hetzner, and users believed it would be a great addition to Ubicloud’s portfolio.

Finally, the announcement of job opportunities at Ubicloud generated excitement from aspiring candidates. It was mentioned that Ubicloud was open to CV submissions, particularly from students with a passion for open source technologies.

Ubicloud’s open and portable Postgres-as-a-Service offering presents a promising alternative in the managed PostgreSQL landscape. With their commitment to openness and user-centric approach, they aim to provide a compelling solution for developers and businesses seeking a flexible and accessible managed database service.