Couchbase is an online real-time NoSQL database storage for an application. It is database packaged software.

Over half of Couchbase customers are hosting their Couchbase databases on Amazon cloud. Couchbase is using Amazon for their internal services, including QA and development, to make sure that the company living to their customers who are hosting their Couchbase over the Amazon cloud.

Couchbase promises its customer the following four things:

1. Flexible data model: the schemaless, JSON-based data model is more natural (and efficient) for developers to work with than fixed schemas of relational databases
2. Consistent high performance: fast, predictable access and high, predictable throughput.
3. Easy scalability: Simple node management, effective auto-sharding, and geographic strength allow you to easily scale from 1 to 10 to 100 nodes.
4. Always on 24×365: you can perform maintenance operations; for example, remove a node completely, upgrade and bring it back on without any harm to the running application

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The Couchbase community package is an open source project licensed under Apache 2.0, and all the sources can be found on GitHub. There is also an Enterprise Edition, which undergoes a strict process of QA and testing, and is ultimately delivered as packaged software. Both editions are available on AWS cloud, and the latter also includes support.

Most Couchbase customers already have experience with moving to Amazon cloud. Most customers start with a few instances to support an initial phase of the Couchbase. Thanks to the cloud, users can grow and scale inside the Amazon cloud. Disk I/O related performance is an important feature that customers should bear in mind when deploying the Couchbase package on Amazon cloud.

Most reasons for a larger cluster are Disk IO related, usually stemming from write load. As an application writes the data, it is cached in memory and then moved to the disk. To generate faster writing of the data onto disk (most of the time to the EBS volume), you will need to raid several (6-8) disks together so that if one or more disks IO fail, it will not harm the overall performance. Couchbase architecture enables the modern interactive online application to leverage the cloud horizontal scaling feature, storing data on multiple Couchbase instances while each instance node holds its own EBS disks’ raid or S3 storage. Couchbase will automatically share the data within a cluster.

With regards to high availability (DR) and performance, Couchbase supports automatic and simultaneous replication of the data between clusters, hence that can be done between AWS regions. Currently, the Couchbase platform doesn’t grouping of servers by zone, however development plans are underway to more finely control the replication for zone/rack-awareness.

Couchbase deployment can range from days to weeks to get a production environment online up and running. The major tasks of Devops are to make sure that the environment is sized correctly, scalable and up-to-date. Sizing is important in order to eliminate any overflow risks, and have full transparency to the NoSQL platform. Couchbase enables monitoring that provides a great amount of metrics, covering the specific clusters all the way to a specific node reporting on RAM, disks, and the relationship between the RAM and the disks. Every node has a web UI as part of its software. The UI is built on a REST API that is available programmatically to facilitate management and control of the Couchbase clusters.

The Couchbase team focuses on supporting its customers with their deployment(s) and educating on how to use the platform. Once in place, the on-going maintenance can basically be controlled by the companies’ own Devops with Couchbase technical support and engineering providing the necessary expertise. The Couchbase team can help when the demand expands and the system needs to scale and support the growth or in response to any issues.

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About The Author

Perry Krug is a lead solutions architect and customer advocate for Couchbase.  Perry has worked with hundreds of users and companies to deploy, manage and maintain their installations of Couchbase’s NoSQL database technology, ranging from single-node deployments to large-scale clusters with literally billions of records.  A very technical player, Perry enjoys being the conduit between his customers and the engineering team, providing the much needed flow of communication for both sides to work efficiently.  He has been with Couchbase for over 2 years, and has been working with high performance caching and database systems for over 6.

Couchbase is the company behind the Couchbase open source project, a vibrant community of developers and users of Couchbasedocument-oriented database technology. Its flagship product, Couchbase Server, is a packaged version of Couchbase technology that’s available in Community and Enterprise Editions. Couchbase known for their easy scalability, consistent high performance, 24×365 availability, and a flexible data model. Companies like AOL, Cisco, Concur, LinkedIn, Orbitz, Salesforce.com, Shuffle Master, Zynga and hundreds of others around the world use Couchbase Server for their interactive web and mobile applications. Follow Couchbase

Keywords: Amazon Cloud, Couchbase, Cloud Database, NoSQL, Cloud Performance , Disaster Recovery, Horizontal Scale, Devops, Database, EBS, S3, API,