Friday, August 28, 2020

IBM Db2 on Cloud News

If you are thinking about, or have already adopted Db2 in the cloud, there is some recent news you should know about. But before we explore that news, let’s take a look at the quick highlights of using Db2 in the cloud.


IBM’s Db2 on Cloud offering is a fully-managed operational data store running the IBM Db2 11.5 engine offering 24x7x365 availability. So if you know Db2 on Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms, you know Db2 on Cloud… but there’s more.

Db2 on Cloud runs containerized Db2 on with a dedicated DevOps team managing the maintenance and updates required to run your mission-critical workloads. This includes features like seamless data federation, point-in-time recovery, HADR with multizone region support and independent scaling. So many of the administrative burdens of managing Db2 on-premises are handled by IBM in the cloud.

Now if you know me, and have been reading my “stuff” on cloud and DBA, you know that this does not mean that you can entirely offload you DBA. But it is cool and it does help, especially with DBA teams being stressed to their limits these days.

So yes, you can run Db2 on Cloud! And there are many good reasons to consider doing so, such as scalability, pay-as-you-use pricing, and to take advantage of managed services.

OK, So What is New?

I promised some news in the title of this blog post and so far we have just set the stage by examining IBM’s cloud offering of Db2 (albeit at a high level). So, what’s new?

Well, IBM is revamping its pricing plans. Before digging into the news, you need to know that IBM offers two high-level pricing plan options.

  • The Lite plan uses a shared multi-tenant system designed for application development and evaluation of IBM Db2 on Cloud. It is offered free-of-charge, without any time limitations.
  • Enterprise plans are for usage and deployment of business applications and systems. It includes one database per service instance with 4 vCPU x 16 GB RAM x 20 GB storage on dedicated compute slices with the option to use a three-HA-node configuration with multizone region support. Pricing starts at $989/month.

What is new is that on August 19 IBM introduced two new plans, the Enterprise non-HA plan, and the Standard non-HA plan.  This means that there are now four options, other than the free Lite plan: Enterprise HA, Enterprise non-HA, Standard HA, and Standard non-HA.

As is typical with IBM pricing, it is not really all that simple and it is getting more complex.  But options are always good (I think).

So what is this Standard plan that does not appear on the IBM Db2 on Cloud: Pricing page? Well, we can find this on the IBM Db2 on Cloud catalog page Here we see that (as one might expect) it is a lower-cost option between Lite and Enterprise starting at 8 GB RAM with 20 GB storage.

IBM also noted that IBM Db2 on Cloud is now available in the following six data centers: Dallas, Frankfurt, Tokyo, London, Sydney, and Washington. And your instances can be provisioned either with or without the Oracle compatibility feature.

It is important to note that IBM also notes that customers on older, legacy plans (how about that, cloud legacy already) will be required to upgrade their to one of the newer plans.

 Summary

So, there are more options to choose from with your Db2 on Cloud implementations. And if you have an older plan take some time to familiarize yourself with the new pricing plan options and be ready to choose accordingly for your workload requirements.

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