When deploying ​Akamai​ Managed Databases powered by Aiven, you select from a variety of database engines and plans. While each database engine stores data, application compatibility and how engines store and access data vary.

Database engines

MySQL

MySQL is an industry standard relational database management system (RDMBS) that uses the SQL query language. MySQL values performance and accessibility over pure SQL compliance, so its syntax can slightly differ from strict SQL. Many popular applications (including WordPress) require MySQL or a MySQL compatible database. Compared to other databases, it's relatively easy to use.

Use MySQL Managed Databases for general-purpose websites and applications, e-commerce sites, and applications employing LAMP or LEMP stacks. Robust online resources will be a great benefit for beginner database developers.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) that can use SQL. It supports many data types, including JSON, and adopts some features of NoSQL databases. It's also more flexible and feature-rich than MySQL. However, it's not a drop-in replacement and applications need to have built-in support for it.

Use PostgreSQL Managed Databases for enterprise applications and applications that perform complex queries using PostgreSQL-specific features. Business users will benefit from dedicated commercial support.

Valkey (LA)

An open source, in-memory, key-value store that understands a rich set of powerful data types used as a database, cache, message broker, and streaming engine. Akamai Valkey Managed Database provides a fully managed, high-performance in-memory data store designed to accelerate AI-powered applications while helping organizations reduce infrastructure costs and operational complexity. To learn more, see Valkey official website.

Valkey Managed Databases are recommended for AI workloads. AI workloads are highly latency-sensitive. Whether you're serving vector search results, maintaining conversation context for AI assistants, caching embeddings, storing session state for agents, or accelerating retrieval pipelines, every millisecond matters.

Database plan limits

Each Managed Database can be deployed with a specific set of resources. This collection of resources is called the plan. ​Akamai​ offers two plan types for Managed Databases: Dedicated CPU and Shared CPU.

Maximum number of connections

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To extend the default limits for number of connections, contact the Support team.

MySQL

The number of maximum simultaneous connections for MySQL depends on RAM your service plan offers:

• Below 4GiB: 100/GiB
• 4 GiB or more: 200/GiB

PostgreSQL

The number of maximum simultaneous connections for PostgreSQL equals 100/GiB on RAM your service plan offers. The maximum value is 2000.

Learn more about connection pooling and maximum number of connections for PostgreSQL and how to manage them. For related troubleshooting, refer to Aiven's Troubleshoot connection pooling problems.

Valkey

The number of maximum simultaneous connections for Valkey depends on the total available memory on the server, with the minimum of 10 000. To estimate it, you can use the following formula:

max_number_of_connections = 4 * m

where m is the memory in MB.