What is our primary use case?
My main use case for SkySQL is to store and manage asset and site data for an industrial asset performance management application with support for analytics, reporting, and high availability.
SkySQL supports my asset performance management application by helping us build a solution that stores asset maintenance and operational data from multiple manufacturing sites. We need a managed, scalable, and highly available database to support dashboards, analytics, and day-to-day application transactions, and that is why we are evaluating SkySQL.
Our main use case is covered, and we are currently evaluating SkySQL to see whether it meets our scalability, availability, and operational requirements.
What is most valuable?
In my experience, the best feature that SkySQL offers is a fully managed database service which reduces operational overhead, along with its high availability and automatic failover for business-critical applications, and its scalability to handle growing data volumes and overloads, plus automated backups and disaster recovery capabilities. These are the key capabilities that make SkySQL attractive for an asset performance management application, but we are still validating them as part of our evaluation.
Since we are still evaluating SkySQL, we have already seen an impact, but as we are still in the evaluation phase, I cannot say any feature has had the biggest impact in production yet. The feature that is most important to us is high availability with automatic failover because our asset performance management application supports critical manufacturing operations.
Besides high availability and scalability, we are hoping to see simple administration and reliable performance. Also, since it is a managed service, we would like to minimize database maintenance, patching, and backup management so our team can focus more on developing the asset performance management application.
What needs improvement?
It is still early in our evaluation of SkySQL, so we do not have major concerns, but if anything, we would like to see even better documentation, onboarding guidance, and monitoring capabilities to make adoption and ongoing management easier.
During evaluation, having more end-to-end onboarding guides with real-world deployment examples would make it easier to validate different architectures. For monitoring, it would be helpful to have more out-of-the-box dashboards, proactive health alerts, and clear recommendations for performance tuning and capacity planning. Those improvements would help teams evaluate and operate the platform more efficiently.
I give SkySQL an eight out of ten instead of a nine or a seven because we are still in the evaluation phase, so I would like to gain more hands-on experience with deployment monitoring, performance under real workloads, and overall operational management before making a final judgment. We also see opportunities for enhanced onboarding guidance and more comprehensive out-of-the-box monitoring and performance recommendations.
We are considering Microsoft Azure and AWS before making a final decision about SkySQL, and we have not finalized the cloud provider yet, but we are considering Microsoft Azure and AWS. It is between the two, and I am not sure which one we are going to deploy.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SkySQL for a year now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SkySQL is stable in my experience.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
So far, SkySQL appears to scale well and aligns with our future growth requirements. We still need to validate it under real workloads, but the initial evaluation has been encouraging.
How are customer service and support?
We are still in the evaluation phase of SkySQL, so we have not had enough interaction with the support team to evaluate it yet, so it is too early for us to comment on the quality of customer support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are comparing SkySQL with other managed database options, and we have not migrated from a specific solution yet. This is part of our evaluation process to identify the best fit for our application.
How was the initial setup?
We have not purchased SkySQL yet as we are still in the evaluation phase. Therefore, no purchase decision has been made, including whether we would use the AWS Marketplace or not.
What about the implementation team?
Our company does not have any business relationship with the vendor other than evaluating SkySQL as a potential customer.
What was our ROI?
For this question, I would say not yet because we are still evaluating SkySQL, so we do not have quantified ROI metrics. Our expectation is that it will reduce operational overhead and database administration time, but we will need production experience before we can measure those benefits.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing and setup cost regarding SkySQL is that it is still too early to provide a definitive assessment. We are currently reviewing the pricing, licensing, and overall cost of ownership as part of our evaluation.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are looking at options such as Amazon RDS for MySQL, Azure Database for MySQL, and other managed relational database services before choosing SkySQL. Our goal is to find the solution that best meets our requirements for scalability, reliability, ease of management, and cost.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using SkySQL would be to run a proof of concept with your own workloads and validate scalability, availability, ease of management, and cost. Comparing it with other managed database options will help you determine whether it is the right fit for your environment.
Regarding SkySQL, we have discussed it thoroughly, and I do not think there is anything I am able to provide a review about since we are in the testing phase. I give SkySQL an overall rating of eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
