Short living databases for feature environments

Neo4j Graph Platform Operations
1

Hi all.

We are building a Saas solution and are starting to use a Graph database. In our development process we are using Feature Environments. When a team creates a PR for their new feature we automatically spin up a new environment for that feature so the team can to their final e2e test. When the PR is merged the environment is deleted. For our MongoDB we use use one big Mongo Atlas deployment with one database. In that database we create collections pre-fixed with the feature name. After the test these collections are removed. This way we keep security (SSO/RBAC/IP filters) the same.

Can we do a similar thing in neo4j/AuraDB? What I have read so far I can only use one (1) DB per auraDB deployment :frowning:

Is there another strategy for short living databases you can recommend?

2

Hi there, thanks for getting in touch.

We’ll be previewing the capability to manage multiple databases within a single AuraDB instance later this quarter, initially focused on the Virtual Dedicated Cloud and Business Critical tiers.

I’d love to hear more about your use case — I’ll send you a direct message so we can discuss further.

Thanks,
Paul

3

For our development cluster with the short living feature environments we decided on the following design:

  • Shared Nginx Ingress and Certificate manager
  • One community edition deployment per feature deployed with Helm
  • We create our own ingress object mapping public HTTPS:// url to the service on port 7474
  • In https://browser.neo4j.io/ select protocol https
  • after the https:// url add :443
    • if not the browser will assume another port

This way the browse will connect trough the NGINX proxy to the local neo4j deployment.

Do not use the Browser hosted by you local neo4j. That version does not support HTTPS.

I hope this helps others :slight_smile:

Thanks to Paul for reaching out and discussing production architecture.

Regards, Jan-Kees