One machine, every engine
Your database, your cache and your queue on one machine, one bill.
A small product usually needs a database, a cache and something to pass messages, and usually ends up paying for each separately, with its own provider, its own bill and its own way of failing. A Lathe instance runs any mix of Postgres 17, Redis 8, CouchDB 3 and NATS 2 on one dedicated machine, each engine on its own TLS port with its own password, sharing the machine's memory on a budget you set. It is one price, one backup and one place to look.
How the engines share a machine.
- Any mix
- Pick the engines when you create the instance, or add and remove them later. An engine you stop keeps its data on disk until you start it again.
- A memory budget you set
- Each engine gets a slice of the plan's RAM. Move the slider and the engine restarts with the new limit in about a minute. Each engine has a floor below which it will not go.
- Separate doors
- Every engine listens on its own port over TLS with its own password. One credential leaking does not open the others.
- One backup
- The daily backup images the whole machine, so the database, the cache and the queue are restored together, to the same moment.
- One bill
- The plan price covers the machine, whatever runs on it. Adding an engine adds nothing to the bill.
- When to split
- If one engine needs the whole machine, or two workloads must not share a failure, run two instances. That is a choice you can make later, not one the pricing forces on you.
Good for
- A web app with Postgres for data and Redis for sessions and cache
- Background jobs on NATS beside the database they work on
- CouchDB for documents that sync to devices, next to Postgres for everything else
- A staging environment that matches production on one small machine
Questions
Do the engines compete for memory?
Each engine has a budget out of the plan's RAM that you set, and a floor it will not go below. Postgres alone gets the whole budget; add Redis and you decide the split.
Can I add an engine to a running instance?
Yes, from the portal, the API or MCP. The engine starts within a minute and gets its own port and password. Removing one stops it and keeps its data.
Are the engines isolated from each other?
They share the machine and its memory budget; each has its own port, TLS and password. They are not isolated from each other's load. For that, run two instances.
Which versions and licences?
Postgres 17 under the PostgreSQL licence, Redis 8 under AGPL-3.0, CouchDB 3 under Apache-2.0 and NATS 2 under Apache-2.0, all unmodified upstream builds.
Read next: Flat-price managed database, No egress fees. Every number on this page comes from the pricing page's facts.
Postgres 17, Redis 8, CouchDB 3 and NATS 2 on one machine, from $15 a month.
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