Introducing impactful updates for Azure CosmosDB — What is Cosmos DB?

4 min readJun 14, 2020

Image Source:- https://build5nines.com/top-10-cosmos-db-features-coming-soon-march-2019/

What is CosmosDB?

CosmosDB is a managed database service that is supported by Satya Nadella’s Cloud Service Provider, Microsoft Azure. It is a database schema that is globally distributed and is used to manage the surplus amount of data contained in isolated data centers. It is also referred to as a Database-as-a-Service offering from Microsoft and is considered to be one of the important aspects of Microsoft Azure. It is highly available and a powerful computational database offering that boasts a lot of services since its launch in 2017.

It is a NoSQL database model that includes several advanced capabilities including API support and compatibility for MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin, and Azure Tables. It is sometimes referred to as the “NewSQL” database because it does not have a relational data model.

Benefits of CosmosDB

With CosmosDB, the problem of creating and managing a traditional database is solved. It is highly scalable and supports global infrastructure which makes it even more powerful and optimized for companies to deploy their businesses on this database at a much cheaper rate. The key benefits of Cosmos DB are as follows:

Availability:- CosmosDB is a complete product that is widely available throughout the world and it can be easily replicated in data-centers situated globally.
Multi-API:- CosmosDB is indexed automatically as a result it supports multi API accessibility of user’s choice. A user can walk through their data through SQL, JavaScript, MongoDB, Azure Tables, and so on.
Latency:- CosmosDB promises its users to guarantee the lowest latency possible of less than 10 milliseconds while reading data and almost 15 milliseconds while writing data.
Pricing:- CosmosDB is extremely affordable and cost-effective compared to other database services. It only charges $0.0277/hr for each Reserved Unit whereas DynamoDB (managed by AWS) charges $0.09/hr for each Reserved Unit. This shows that Cosmos DB is even cheaper than DynamoDB and very user friendly.

Detailed Comparison between CosmosDB vs DynamoDB

The two most popular NoSQL database services can be compared based on the following criteria:

Use-Cases:- CosmosDB offers multiple NoSQL choices including Key-value, graph, column family, and document data in one service whereas DynamoDB offers flexibility in choosing document and key-store models for all applications.
Agility:- DynamoDB is a consistent AWS Database service schema that has single-digit latency whereas CosmosDB guarantees low latency up to 20 milliseconds for reading and writing data.
Who uses when? Users who have simple use cases and are quite stuck in the budget can opt for CosmoDB whereas users who do not want any interruption or non-elasticity in their applications generally opt for DynamoDB.

Image Source:- https://cloudxchange.io/on-prem-vs-cloud-database/

Recent updates introduced by Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure holds around 21% of Cloud Service Provider shares in the market and it is really a significant amount considering the contribution made by other CSPs and the head start that AWS got. Recently, the venture announced major updates to its legacy database model called CosmosDB to allow it to compete with DynamoDB and other database services contributing to the world of Cloud Computing. The updates were mainly focused to make it a cost-effective and even more secure database service. The major updates are as follows:

Encryption with Customer Managed Keys:- Customer managed Keys are used for encrypting the data in Microsoft Azure in a more optimized manner hence Azure is letting the clients use their own keys and manage the security provided, they comply with the basic demands and the requirements. This adds an extra layer of security over the previously defaulted security layer added by Azure at no additional cost.
CosmosDB AutoScale:- It was previously termed as “Auto Pilot” and it promises the clients with SLA backed single-digit latency and 99.999% availability.
Improved Python SDK:- The new version (currently called 4.0) provides a mesmerizing user experience to the developers, support for bug fixes, and an enhanced usability feature with no additional commitments.
Private Link for CosmosDB:- This allows users to connect with CosmosDB from their Virtual Private Network via a private endpoint which really sets it apart from other database services.

The major updates that Microsoft introduced might look pretty trivial considering the vast amount of featured services such as Redshift or DynamoDB provides, but CosmosDB has focused on the most important aspect of data storing ie.., cost. Microsoft Azure has really made the database a cost-effective one for clients hence the introduction of the recent updates to the serverless platform has pushed the cost to almost negligible.

Key Takeaways

Being the second most popular CSP, it is a very tough competition for all its database services when compared to DynamoDB, Kinesis, or Redshift, but the introduction of the new updates has proved to be a masterstroke for Microsoft. Clients are switching to this service due to its higher availability and affordable data storing media. The serverless pricing model and the SLA backed low latency cloud-native Azure CosmosDB is the best in class NoSQL database to build highly scalable modern applications with minimal capacity and maximum returns.