Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL vs. Azure Database for PostgreSQL: When to choose which

Michal Toiba

Do you have PostgreSQL workloads? You can take advantage of your familiar Postgres tools while benefiting from high performance and unlimited scale on Azure. We offer multiple fully-managed, open-source database options for hosting your Postgres data.

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL is ideal for building new cloud-native and highly scalable apps, powered by the open source Citus extension. Azure Database for PostgreSQL– Flexible Server is best for migrating and modernizing existing PostgreSQL or Oracle applications to Azure. With both options, you get support for the latest PostgreSQL versions and a wide range of popular Postgres extensions.

To get started, we’ve put together some factors to consider when choosing the right PostgreSQL on Azure to power your workloads.

 

Image Pick the right PostgreSQL option on Azure Final

 

 

Building new or migrating?

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL is a native PostgreSQL, globally distributed relational database that automatically shards data to help you build highly scalable apps. If you’re looking to build new apps and databases, choose Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL. When building from scratch, you can take advantage of cloud native development architecture patterns and technologies that allow you to build apps for any scale on a platform that scales with your needs.

If you’re looking for a simple and friction-free experience to migrate and modernize your existing Postgres or Oracle applications to a fully managed PostgreSQL database, choose Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is an intelligent open-source relational database with support for the latest Postgres versions, enterprise grade security, and built-in high availability to ensure zero data loss for high performance data workloads.

Both Postgres options automate the management of your database infrastructure and take the administration out of your typical database management tasks, allowing you to focus on app development.

 

Types of workloads

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL is optimized for building new apps, multi-tenant SaaS apps, and high throughput transactional apps. The scalability of Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL enables you to host hundreds or thousands of tenants on a single cluster, but also isolate tenants into their own nodes on the cluster. This can be done online with no downtime and no application changes.

For PostgreSQL or Oracle applications that require a simple and frictionless lift and shift to take advantage of the benefits of a fully managed database, Azure Database for PostgreSQL is the best choice.

 

Performance and scalability

Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL offers fast, high-performance distributed PostgreSQL with scale-out to multiple nodes. You can build on a single node and scale out to clusters as your workload evolves, without any changes to your application. Multi-region read replicas give you globally scalable applications via low-latency reads across geographies & multi-region disaster recovery.

With Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible server you get a high availability SLA of up to 99.99% and built-in automation for database maintenance, patching, and updates. Leverage intelligent tuning to optimize peak database performance based on usage patterns and independently scale compute or storage.

 

Savings

With Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL, you can start free on a single node and grow to any scale. At a few dollars a day, it’s the most cost-effective way to experience Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL. Later, if your application requires greater scale, you can add nodes and rebalance your data.

When migrating your on premises Postgres database with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, you can achieve a 62 percent lower total cost of ownership and take advantage of operational savings from decreased infrastructure database management. Leverage further cost savings with burstable or reserved instances and stop-start capabilities, paying for storage only when your database is stopped.

 

The benefits of PostgreSQL on Azure

As fully managed database services, both Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL have all the features you need for worry-free operation in production. These include: automatic high availability, backups, scalable compute, multi-region replication, and encryption. Both database options are powered by the latest Postgres community edition engine and support popular Postgres extensions such as PostGIS for geospatial, HLL for HyperLogLog, pg_cron for running scheduled jobs, and more.

 

Get started

Try Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL for free. To learn more about Azure Cosmos DB visit our website or check out our documentation.

 

1 comment

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  • Portal User 2 0

    Thanks Michal, I needed this yesterday! I wanted to test setting up Drupal with a version of postgreSQL, so tried both.

    I found:
    – Single server (non-flexible) Azure Database for postgreSQL I think is slowly on it’s way out?
    – Single server Azure Database for postgreSQL was only available on version 11.8 in australiasoutheast, and that wouldn’t run the latest version of Drupal (I tried the previous version successfully).
    – Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL was only available in australiaeast (not australiasoutheast), but was available with postgreSQL v15 the very latest.
    – Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL was actually available in an ever lower (less per month) configuration for my test. So it isn’t necessarily just for large hightly scaled apps.

    Either way, they ran Drupal, although in my case I was only able to run Drupal 10 (latest) on Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL (because of the older version of postgreSQL available on the single server version of Azure Database for postgreSQL in my region.

    All good stuff.

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