What is IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL?
IBM Cloud™ Databases for PostgreSQL is a managed PostgreSQL database-as-a-service that lets teams spend more time building, with high availability, backup orchestration, Point-In-Time-Recovery (PITR), and read replica at the push of a button. PostgreSQL is an object-relational SQL database, complemented by powerful enhancements like indexable JSON, publish/subscribe functions and drivers. For a detailed look at the database, see "PostgreSQL Explained."
Databases for PostgreSQL features
Fully managed PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL-as-a-service allows developers to focus on building applications rather than handling high availability, point-in-time backups, logging, monitoring, scaling, hardware setup and software patching. We provide out-of-the-box integration with IBM Identity and Access Management and IBM Activity Tracker to extend access control and auditing. Databases for PostgreSQL is also automatically integrated into IBM Log Analysis with LogDNA, allowing you to access, debug and troubleshoot your database logs directly from the LogDNA console.
Highly available
Every IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL deployment is built as a highly-available clustered configuration. All deployments leverage multiple availability zones, with three data centers in a given region, where available, for a 99.99% SLA. Access to the database is also routed through a single endpoint for easy driver configuration and seamless database failover handling.
Enterprise security
All data is encrypted at rest and in motion. You can leverage integrations with IBM Key Protect to bring your own encryption key for disk storage. All data-in-transit uses TLS connections, and data-at-rest is encrypted by default, always. Database backups are also automatically encrypted at rest. The ability to set IP whitelists and integrations with IBM Identity and Access Management plus IBM Cloud Activity Tracker provides further access and audit control. The service is SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 certified and HIPAA-ready.
Scalable
Databases for PostgreSQL allows you to scale disk and RAM independently to best fit your application requirements. You can also add read replicas to your managed PostgreSQL deployments to offload traffic from your leader database. Read replicas provide increased availability of your data in disaster-recovery situations, allowing for greater business continuity and enhanced performance.
Automation aware
Go from whiteboard to production quickly with a management console, CLI and REST API. The management console supports features such as database settings and backup administration, while the CLI and API support database lifecycle events like provisioning, deletion, user creation and scaling. The service also provides cloud-native administration options, with an IBM Cloud CLI plug-in.
Economical
Databases for PostgreSQL is billed hourly and helps enable you to separately scale disk, RAM and vCPUs for each of your deployments. No need to migrate instance classes to accommodate growth.
Use cases for PostgreSQL
Web and mobile apps
Build massively scalable enterprise applications that can handle millions of users.
How to connect a PostgreSQL cloud database deployment to a kubernetes app

Business intelligence
Build sophisticated analytics applications or easily visualize and derive insights from your relational data.

Location and mapping
PostGIS is enabled out of the box, which allows for the handling of geographic objects in Databases for PostgreSQL. For example, applications can perform customer cohort geolocation to deliver highly-targeted ad campaigns, offers and sales.
Learn how to run complex geospatial queries using PostGIS and pgRouting

Database consolidation
Move your existing databases to the IBM Cloud while consolidating license costs, retiring servers and cleaning up database sprawl.

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