Basic Concepts

Instances

The smallest management unit of GaussDB is the instance. A DB instance is an isolated database environment on the cloud. You can create and manage instances on the management console. For details about instance statuses, instance specifications, storage types, and versions, see DB Instance Description.

Instance Versions

GaussDB 1.4, 2.0, and 2.3 are supported. To use GaussDB 2.0, configure the trustlist permissions and submit an application by choosing Service Tickets > Create Service Ticket in the upper right corner of the management console.

Instance Types

GaussDB supports distributed and primary/standby instances. You can add nodes for distributed instances as needed to handle large volumes of concurrent requests. The primary/standby instances are suitable for scenarios with small and stable volumes of data, where data reliability and service availability are extremely important.

Instance Specifications

The instance specifications determine the computation (vCPUs) and memory capacity (in GB) of an instance. For details, see Instance Specifications.

Coordinator Nodes

Coordinator nodes (CNs) store database metadata, distribute and execute query tasks, and then return the query results from DNs to applications.

Data Nodes

Data nodes (DNs) store and query table data.

Automated Backups

When you create an instance, automated backup is enabled by default. After the instance is created, you can modify the backup policy. GaussDB will automatically create backups for instances based on your settings.

Manual Backups

Manual backups are user-initiated full backups of instances. They are retained until you delete them manually.

Regions and AZs

A region and availability zone (AZ) identify the location of a data center. You can create resources in a specific region and AZ.

• Regions are defined by a combination of geographical location and network latency. Public services, such as Elastic Cloud Server (ECS), Elastic Volume Service (EVS), Object Storage Service (OBS), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Elastic IP (EIP), and Image Management Service (IMS), are shared within the same region. Regions can be universal or dedicated. A universal region provides all sorts of cloud services for all users. A dedicated region provides only services of a given type or only for specific users.
• An AZ contains one or more physical data centers. Each AZ has independent cooling, fire extinguishing, moisture-proofing, and electricity facilities. Within an AZ, compute, network, storage, and other resources are logically divided into multiple instances. AZs within a region are interconnected using high-speed optical fibers to allow you to build highly available systems across AZs.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between regions and AZs.

Figure 1 Regions and AZs

Huawei Cloud provides services in many regions around the world. You can select a region and an AZ as needed. For more information, see Global Products and Services.

Projects

Projects are used to group and isolate OpenStack resources (compute, storage, and network resources). A project can be a department or a project team. Multiple projects can be created for one account.