In this article on Container Journal, Cedrick Lunven and I propose a model for evaluating the maturity of databases claiming to be “cloud native”. The levels in this model include:

• Maturity Level 0: Cloud-Ready Data
• Maturity Level 1: Kubernetes-Native Data
• Maturity Level 2: Managed Data Services
• Maturity Level 3: Serverless Data

Key quote:

Simply deploying a database in a containerized environment such as Kubernetes is, by itself, not enough to deliver the cloud-native database characteristics of scalability, elasticity, resiliency, observability and automation. To reach the level of a managed service, or “database-as-a-service” (DBaaS), you need additional operational logic for things such as: maintenance operations, monitoring, and observability.

The article cites cass-operator and K8ssandra as two open source projects that demonstrate a high level of cloud-native database maturity, approximating the functionality of a third-party DBaaS.