Escape Database Resource Constraints with Lithus

Your database is the heart of your application, yet we see so many companies constantly needing to make compromises. Engineers know their workload needs 128GB of RAM and 48 vCPUs, but they're stuck with a 32GB instance because that's all their cloud budget allows. Sound familiar?

This resource constraint dance is killing productivity and development velocity across startups and SMEs. Engineering teams spend countless hours optimising queries that wouldn't need optimising, implementing complex caching layers, and architecting around limitations rather than building features. Meanwhile, your cloud bill keeps climbing whilst performance remains frustratingly inadequate.

The numbers tell the story: organisations are exceeding their cloud budgets by an average of 17%, with 27% of cloud spend estimated as waste according to Flexera's 2025 State of the Cloud Report. That's not just inefficiency — we see it as a systematic problem with how cloud resources are priced and allocated.

The Business Problem¶

Public cloud providers have trained us to accept their resource limitations as normal. Need more than 32GB of RAM for your PostgreSQL instance? That'll be €4,000+ per month on AWS RDS (Relational Database Service). Want dedicated CPU cores instead of shared ones? Prepare for sticker shock.

The mathematics are brutal. For a replica pair of PostgreSQL instances, the pricing looks something like this:

Not only does Lithus offer almost 4x the CPU resource, we also include regular DevOps time from our on-call senior engineers every month.

When your database is resource-constrained, the real costs extend far beyond the monthly bill:

Engineering Time Waste: Your senior developers spend 20-30% of their time on performance optimisation that wouldn't be necessary with adequate resources. That's up to €60,000 annually in wasted salary costs per engineer. With managing cloud spend being the top challenge for 84% of organisations according to Flexera's 2025 State of the Cloud Report, it's clear this isn't just a technical problem—it's a business-critical issue affecting the entire industry.

Feature Velocity: Complex queries get shelved, new analytics features become impossible, and product roadmaps get constrained by database limitations rather than business requirements.

Operational Overhead: Constant monitoring, query tuning, and emergency scaling events create an always-on stress that burns out teams and disrupts focus.

We've seen clients effectively eliminate their database-related incidents simply by moving to appropriately-sized bare metal instances.

Our Approach¶

Here's what changes when you deploy databases on properly-sized bare metal infrastructure:

Massive Resource Headroom¶

A typical server in our clusters provides 48+ vCPUs, 256GB+ of RAM, high-performance NVMe storage, and dedicated fibre connectivity. This isn't theoretical—it's what we deploy for clients who were previously struggling with 8-core, 64GB cloud instances.

Need something bigger? We can provision servers with 96 vCPUs and 1TB of memory if your workload demands it. The point is that your database gets the resources it actually needs, rather than being squeezed into expensive instances within constrained budgets.

Predictable Performance¶

Unlike cloud instances that share underlying hardware, bare metal gives you:

• Dedicated CPU cores with no noisy neighbours
• Consistent I/O performance without throttling
• Predictable network latency for replication and backups
• No hypervisor overhead eating 5-10% of your resources

Results & Proof¶

Moving to bare metal isn't just about bigger numbers—it's about operational freedom:

Gain a DevOps Team: We become your DevOps team, able to handle emergencies, day-to-day work, system design, and long-term planning.

Full Administrative Access: Install any PostgreSQL extension, tune kernel parameters, or implement custom monitoring without cloud provider restrictions.

Data Sovereignty: Your data stays in datacentres under your chosen jurisdiction, with no Cloud Act concerns or surprise data transfer fees.

Extension Library Freedom: No longer be limited to the database extensions available from your cloud provider.

Next Steps¶

Database resource constraints aren't a fact of life—they're a choice. The choice between accepting cloud provider limitations or accessing the performance your applications actually need.

Our bare metal databases deliver dramatically higher performance at a fraction of the cost. More importantly, it frees your engineering team to focus on building features rather than working around resource limitations.

If you're spending thousands monthly on cloud databases and still hitting resource constraints, it might be time to consider whether there's a better path forward—one that gives your applications the performance they deserve without the constant compromises.

Key Takeaways¶

• Cloud databases force expensive compromises that waste engineering time
• Bare metal offers 3-4x more resources at competitive pricing
• Resource constraints kill feature velocity and burn out teams
• Lithus provides dedicated infrastructure plus DevOps expertise
• Moving to bare metal eliminates database-related incidents