Bluemix ClearDB MySQL capacity limitation

Question

The MySQL ClearDB service in Bluemix catalogue is offered with one single plan with a very limited capacity (5MB and 4 connections) and for free. Do you have a recommendation for an application that requires a mysql db with a higher capacity? Should I run an hybrid application with the database on Heroku and the app on Bluemix? thanks

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 12 '15 at 09:00

Although the clearDB service in Bluemix only currently offers the 'Free' Spark plan you can go directly to cleardb.com and use one of the larger paid plans. In Bluemix you can then create what is called a User-Provided Service using the cf cups command. The User-Provided Service needs to be populated with the connection and credential details needed to access the clearDB service you have created directly on cleardb.com

There is more information in the Bluemix docs on how to run the command.

The obvious drawbacks of this are that you need to manage the service details yourself in Bluemix, so if clearDB change the server name for example then you manually have to update the User-Provided Service in Bluemix. In reality this is not likely to occur that often (if at all). The other drawback is that you will have a separate bill from clearDB rather than one single bill from Bluemix.

I believe in the future more plans for the 3rd party providers should be made available within Bluemix.

To connect securely with ClearDB instance do we need to pass secure connection details (certificates) too along service details? can these certificates referred from classpath? — Sudheer, Feb 19 '16 at 12:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 12 '15 at 08:56

I heard Bluemix is in a process of providing more plans. In the meantime, You can create the DB directly in http://www.cleardb.com. And then, use the database from your Bluemix application. The problem might be VCAP_SERVICES. In stead of VCAP_SERVICES, you can define user-defined service variable, then read the setting from your application. Please refer to this documentation.

http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/services/user-provided.html

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 20 '16 at 16:24

A kind of ugly side effect of this limitation is that if you for instance run a WordPress application, ClearDB completely blocks access to your db when you reach your capacity and implicitly blocks you out of your site admin, cause it revokes you edit access (tied to admin user). Ugleeeee. Any solution for this, other than paying extra, cause I will be okay with just cleaning the database, which I also cannot do without edit access. Catch-22.

Bluemix ClearDB MySQL capacity limitation

3 Answers3