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  • Tonic Ephemeral guide
  • About Tonic Ephemeral
  • Getting started with the Ephemeral free trial
  • Managing your Ephemeral account
  • Managing Databases
    • Viewing the list of databases
    • Starting a database
    • Changing the database configuration
    • Database configuration settings
      • Setting the required resources for a database
      • Setting the database expiration
      • Providing a custom configuration file
    • Connecting to a database
    • Resetting a database
    • Deactivating and reactivating databases
    • Managing auto snapshots
    • Tracking database activity
    • Deleting a database
  • Managing user snapshots
    • About user snapshots
    • Viewing the user snapshot list
    • Creating a user snapshot from an Ephemeral database
    • Creating a user snapshot from imported data
    • Editing a user snapshot
    • Creating a database from a user snapshot
    • Deleting a user snapshot
  • Installing and configuring Ephemeral
    • Ephemeral architecture
    • Configuring an allowlist for Ephemeral Cloud database connections
    • Installing a self-hosted instance of Ephemeral
      • System requirements
      • Deploying Ephemeral with Helm
    • Configuring database access on a self-hosted instance
    • Configuring tolerations and node selectors
    • Managing access to Ephemeral
      • Managing Ephemeral users
      • Enabling SSO on a self-hosted instance
        • Google
        • Okta
    • Setting the registry location for data volumes
    • Managing custom images
      • Creating, editing, and deleting custom images
      • Oracle image configuration
    • Configuring automatic deletion of snapshots
  • Monitoring and data collection
    • Monitoring your Ephemeral billed usage
    • Monitoring your disk storage
    • Data that Tonic.ai collects
  • Using the Ephemeral API
    • About the Ephemeral API
    • Configuring Ephemeral
    • Getting information about Ephemeral databases
    • Starting a database
    • Managing databases
    • Managing snapshots
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  • Starting a completely new database
  • Setting the database name and description
  • Starting from a user snapshot
  • Starting from a data volume
  • Creating an empty database
  • Setting other configuration settings
  • Starting the new database
  • Copying an existing database

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  1. Managing Databases

Starting a database

PreviousViewing the list of databasesNextChanging the database configuration

Last updated 7 months ago

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To start a database, you can either:

  • Create a completely new database from a base image or volume

  • Copy an existing Tonic Ephemeral database

For a new database, you can create the database from either:

  • A user snapshot. The new database is populated with the data from the snapshot. This might be:

    • A user snapshot created from another Ephemeral database. For more information, go to Creating a user snapshot from an Ephemeral database.

    • A user snapshot created by importing data from an external source. For more information, go to Creating a user snapshot from imported data.

    • A user snapshot created from a Tonic Structural data generation where the workspace is configured to write output to an Ephemeral user snapshot. For more information, in the Structural documentation, go to .

  • A data volume that is in your container registry. The database is populated from the data volume. This might be a data volume created from a Tonic Structural data generation where the workspace is configured to write output to a container repository. For more information, in the Structural documentation, go to . The data volumes are in a location that you configure in Ephemeral. For more information, go to Setting the registry location for data volumes.

  • An image that Ephemeral provides. This creates an empty database.

When you copy an existing database, it uses the current data in the copied database.

For both new and cloned databases, you can configure the allocated disk storage and expiration.

Starting a completely new database

To start and configure a new database, on the Databases page, click Start Database.

The database creation panel displays.

Setting the database name and description

In the Name field, provide a name for the database.

Optionally, in the Description field, provide a longer description of the database.

Starting from a user snapshot

To create the database from a user snapshot:

  1. On the database creation panel, under Source data from, click Snapshot.

  2. From the User snapshots dropdown list, select the user snapshot to use for the database. To search for a specific snapshot, begin to type the snapshot name.

Starting from a data volume

To create the database from a data volume in your container registry, under Source data from, click Registry.

In the Volume field, specify the volume.

An Ephemeral data volume is an OCI artifact that contains one layer. The layer consists of a tar.gz of the database’s data directory, and a JSON file that provides database metadata. To specify the volume, use one of the following formats:

  • <registry URL>/<repository path>:<tag> (For example, quay.io/tonicai/ephemeral-volumes:myvolume)

  • <registry URL>/<repository path>@<digest> (For example, quay.io/tonicai/ephemeral-volumes@sha256:930513081gpwl92fda75560fa67ul9afe03bc19e250258c915abceb72f8329da2)

Creating an empty database

To create an empty database:

  1. Under Source data from, click Create an empty database.

  2. Under Select database type, click the type of database Ephemeral currently supports the following database types:

    • MySQL

    • Oracle

    • PostgreSQL

    • SQL Server

  3. From the Image dropdown list, select the image to use. The list includes the images for different versions of the database type that you selected.

    For Ephemeral Cloud, you can only select the Oracle 23c image that we provide. This image has the following limitations:

    • A maximum of 12GB of user data

    • A maximum of 2CPU cores and 2GB of RAM

    On a self-hosted instance, the available images include any custom images that you added. For more information, go to Managing custom images.

Setting other configuration settings

After you set the source information for the database:

  1. Configure the storage and compute resources for the database. For more information, go to Setting the required resources for a database.

  2. Configure the expiration for the database. For more information, go to Setting the database expiration.

  3. For a MySQL database, optionally provide a custom configuration file. For more information, go to Providing a custom configuration file.

Starting the new database

After you complete the configuration, to start the database, click Start.

Tonic Ephemeral adds the database to the list, and creates an auto snapshot of the database.

Copying an existing database

You can also start a new database by copying an existing database. When you copy a database, you start with the data that is currently in the copied database.

For a cloned database, you can only change the allocated space and the expiration settings.

To copy an existing database to a new database:

  1. On the Databases page, click the options menu for the database to clone.

  1. In the options menu, click Copy Database.

  1. On the details panel, in the Name field, provide the name for the new database.

  2. Optionally, in the Description field, provide a longer description for the new database.

  3. Configure the storage and compute resources for the database. For details, go to Setting the required resources for a database. Note that the allocated disk space for the copy cannot be less than the allocated space for the original database.

  4. Configure the expiration for the database. For details, go to Setting the database expiration.

  5. Click Save. Ephemeral adds the database to the list, and creates an auto snapshot of the database.

Note that you can also . From the Snapshots page, you can create a database from either a user snapshot or an auto snapshot.

start a database from a snapshot on the Snapshots page
Writing output to Tonic Ephemeral
Writing output to a container repository
Name and Description fields for a new database
Fields to create a database from a user snapshot
Fields to create a database from a data volume in the container registry
Fields to create an empty database from an image
Resource and expiration configuration settings for a new database
Database options menu
Configuration panel to copy an existing database