SpinupWP has always installed and configured MySQL or MariaDB when spinning up a new server. Starting today, you have the option to provide connection information for an external database server instead.
Choosing this option will skip the installation of MySQL or MariaDB and use that external database server for all your sites on the web server.
When a web server is struggling to handle traffic to a site, most folks reach for the “upgrade server” lever first. Increasing CPU and memory (scaling vertically) is the quickest and easiest thing to do. However, at some point you’ll max out the CPU and memory limits. Then what?
Load balancing is often the next lever folks reach for, but the first step in scaling horizontally is to move MySQL/MariaDB onto a separate database server. Having a separate database server also makes moving sites between servers a lot easier because you don’t have to move the database. This benefit is a good reason to move MySQL/MariaDB to a separate database server well before maxing out CPU and memory limits on a single server.
In fact, we ran deliciousbrains.com (WordPress + WooCommerce) with an external database (DigitalOcean Managed Database – MySQL 8) since August 2020 and it worked great.
For more details and our recommendations, see the External Databases doc.
We’re also working on two more docs with step-by-step instructions for creating a managed database on DigitalOcean and Amazon Lightsail, and then adding it to SpinupWP as an external database. Stay tuned for those.