Managed Database: how to choose the right type of storage
This article will highlight the main differentiators when choosing the storage type for your managed database.
From Self-Hosted to Sovereign: The Benefits of Managed MongoDB®
For CTOs and Engineering Managers, the "build vs. buy" decision is a constant balance. On the one hand, self-hosting your NoSQL Database offers granular control; on the other, the work required to patch, scale, and secure that infrastructure can consume valuable engineering hours.
As data demands grow, the cost of self-hosting often outweighs the benefits. A modern technical strategy requires a shift: moving from hosting a database yourself to using a fully managed solution that combines flexibility with operational efficiency.
Based on the latest insights from our product teams and partners at MongoDB, here is why migrating to Managed MongoDB® on Scaleway helps leadership lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and focus on product development.
The real cost of self-hosting
Many engineering teams start by self-hosting MongoDB (often the Community Edition) on-premise or on bare metal. It works — until the application needs to scale.
For an Engineering Manager, the challenges are immediate. Managing peak times requires manual intervention. Ensuring high availability is a constant risk. Instead of building features that grow the business, your senior engineers spend time managing backups, configuring firewalls, and maintaining hardware.
For a CTO, this increases the TCO: you’re not just paying for infrastructure, you’re paying for your team's time and attention.
The solution: managed, not just hosted
Scaleway’s Managed MongoDB® offering is a certified product partnership developed with MongoDB’s own Professional Services teams.
By using enterprise-grade tools like MongoDB Ops Manager and MongoDB Kubernetes Operator, we automate complex tasks such as:
- Automated scaling: storage and compute are separated, allowing you to scale resources independently. If you need more IOPS but not more CPU, you can adjust that without over-provisioning.
- High availability: general purpose instances launch with a 3-node replica set by default, ensuring automatic failover and data resilience.
- Security and maintenance: we handle updates, security patches, and hardware management.
Key takeaway: your team saves time, stops acting as database administrators and starts focusing on your core product.
Why sovereignty matters
In the current European landscape, data residency is a regulatory necessity.
Hosting your MongoDB database in a true sovereign cloud environment (not just in European datacenters) offers stability, compliance, and long-term peace of mind — all the while accessing the leading document database.
With Scaleway, you ensure:
- GDPR compliance: your data stays strictly within European borders, guaranteeing compliance with data protection regulations.
- Legal stability: unlike with US-based providers, relying on a sovereign cloud provider keeps your data immune to extraterritorial jurisdiction.
- Customer trust: your end users also value data privacy. Using a sovereign cloud allows you to assure your customers that their data is stored securely, strengthening their confidence in your service.
Businesses can modernize their database infrastructure while meeting legal and ethical data standards.
Seamless migration: zero downtime guaranteed
A major concern for Engineering Managers during migration is downtime. Moving terabytes of data without interrupting production is difficult.
To solve this challenge, we use Mongosync, a tool designed to ensure a smooth transition from self-hosted environments.
How it works:
- Sync: you connect your source cluster (self-hosted) to the target (Scaleway Managed MongoDB®).
- Replicate: data is copied in real-time. The target cluster catches up on all writes from the source.
- Cutover: once synchronized, you switch your application connection strings to the Scaleway endpoint.
The result is a migration with virtually zero downtime. You can validate the data on the target before the switch, reducing the risk associated with traditional "lift and shift" operations.
👉 Learn more about migrating to Scaleway Managed MongoDB® here.
Getting ready for AI workloads
The database landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by Generative AI. A modern NoSQL database needs to support intelligent applications, not just store JSON.
Scaleway’s ecosystem is built to support AI workloads effectively. Once vector search is in general availability in MongoDB’s Community version, placing your Managed MongoDB® instance in the same Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) as Scaleway’s Managed Inference and GPU instances will create a secure, high-performance environment for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architectures.
Your data and vectors live in the same platform: when a user prompts your AI, the system performs a vector search in Managed MongoDB® to find relevant context before sending it to the LLM. Because this happens within a private network, your sensitive data never crosses the public internet.
Try Managed MongoDB®: 30 days free
The best way to evaluate a database solution is to test it. That’s why we are offering a 30-day free trial for Managed MongoDB®!
Whether you need to prototype a new feature, test a migration strategy, or benchmark performance against your current setup, you can deploy up to three instances for free for a month.
This includes full access to essential features such as:
- Production-ready replica sets
- Full monitoring via Cockpit, Scaleway’s observability solution
- Integration with the rest of the Scaleway ecosystem
👉 Start your 30-day free trial
Beyond the database: Scaleway’s complete cloud ecosystem
Moving from self-hosted to Scaleway’s Managed MongoDB® is more than an infrastructure upgrade: it connects your data to a complete, rapidly evolving cloud ecosystem.
You gain immediate access to essential security and scalability features, including:
- Direct VPC integration for network isolation;
- Simple storage scaling powered by our Block Storage;
- Automated backups and comprehensive user permission management.
As the platform grows, so do your capabilities. We’re actively developing Audit Trail integration and a data orchestration tool to connect your operational database easily with other managed tools like Data Warehouse for ClickHouse® and Data Lab for Apache Spark®.
For CTOs, it reduces TCO while also ensuring sovereignty. For Engineering Managers, it solves scaling challenges and improves team efficiency.
Ultimately, you get the flexibility of MongoDB’s NoSQL database technology, with the security and reliability of Scaleway’s sovereign cloud.
Stop managing servers. Start building your product.
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