Book Image

Guide to NoSQL with Azure Cosmos DB

By : Gaston C. Hillar, Daron Yöndem
Book Image

Guide to NoSQL with Azure Cosmos DB

By: Gaston C. Hillar, Daron Yöndem

Overview of this book

Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database service included in Azure that is continuously adding new features and has quickly become one of the most innovative services found in Azure, targeting mission-critical applications at a global scale. This book starts off by showing you the main features of Cosmos DB, their supported NoSQL data models and the foundations of its scalable and distributed architecture. You will learn to work with the latest available tools that simplify your tasks with Cosmos DB and reduce development costs, such as the Data Explorer in the Azure portal, Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer, and the Cosmos DB Emulator. Next, move on to working with databases and document collections. We will use the tools to run schema agnostic queries against collections with the Cosmos DB SQL dialect and understand their results. Then, we will create a first version of an application that uses the latest .NET Core SDK to interact with Cosmos DB. Next, we will create a second version of the application that will take advantage of important features that the combination of C# and the .NET Core SDK provides, such as POCOs and LINQ queries. By the end of the book, you will be able to build an application that works with a Cosmos DB NoSQL document database with C#, the .NET Core SDK, LINQ, and JSON.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Understanding the system topology NoSQL


Now that we understand the basics of the Cosmos DB resource model, we will analyze the system topology that is hidden behind the scenes and makes it possible to run the database service at a global scale. The following diagram illustrates the system topology, starting at a Cosmos DB account on Earth, covering up to the fault domains. At the time I was writing this book, Azure didn't have any Moon or Mars regions enabled for Cosmos DB:

As previously explained, Cosmos DB is available in many Azure regions across around the world. Each Azure region has many data centers. Each data center has deployed many big racks known as stamps. The stamps are divided into fault domains that have server infrastructures.

The following diagram illustrates the system topology for each fault domain:

There are clusters with hundreds of servers deployed to many fault domains. The replica sets are deployed to many fault domains to provide an infrastructure that is highly resilient and continues working without issues when hardware failures occur. Each cluster has a database replica with the following elements:

  • Resource governor for throughput and latency guarantees
  • Transport layer for replication
  • Admission control for security (authentication and authorization)
  • Database engine to run operations, queries, and indexing