We will be provisioning a managed database on Digital Ocean today.

Why? Well it can be a bit of a headache to set up and manage a database in a production environment. For instance, you need to consider maintenance, scalability, backups, reliability and security...Like I said, Headache!

Managed database services are designed to reduce the headaches associated with provisioning and managing a database. There are numerous managed database service providers i.e. AWS RDS and Google Cloud SQL. However, we will be using DigitalOcean in this tutorial.

Don't want to read this tutorial? Okay, fine. I have put this video together for you.

Okay, let's jump into it...

Syllabus:

This tutorial will focus on the following:

1. Creating a managed database
2. Configuring the database

Creating a managed database:

As mentioned above, we will be using Digital Ocean's managed database service today.

Note: It will be helpful, but not essential, to have a virtual machine (droplet) configured for this tutorial. Follow this turorial to set up one up.

Let's get started!..

Visit DigitalOcean and set up an account. This only takes a few minutes.

Now, click on the green 'Create' button and select 'Databases'

This will redirect you to a new page. The easiest way to set up a database is to click the database type and click the 'Create a Database Cluster' button at the bottom of the page.

However, when setting up your database you may want to spend more time configuring it to you needs. For instance, I would select the London data centre as it is the closest to me and my users.

Configuring the database:

You will be redirected to this next page when you click the 'Create a Database Cluster' button. Click the 'Get started button':

You will now be asked to add a trusted source. You will need to add the IP address of any machine that will need to access the new database. Add the IP of your own machine and the IP address of you virtual machine (droplet) into the field and click 'Allow these inbound sources only'.

Click the 'Continue' button when shown the connection details.

Now click the 'Great, I'm done' button when shown next steps.

That's it! Your database will be ready to go as soon as Digital Ocean has finished configuring everything. Make a note of your database details as you will need them to connect.

Conclusion

We have set up a managed database service on Digital Ocean.