August 2016 Summaries

Aerospike v3.9.2 introduces a new Heartbeat algorithm (v3) that simplifies operational experience and allows dynamically adding nodes up to the maximum cluster size allowed by the edition. The new algorithm improves both speed of cluster formation and stability, reducing network bandwidth consumption and enabling faster cluster formation in mesh mode. It also supports larger clusters with mesh mode and allows stopping and restarting the heartbeat layer in mesh and multicast modes. Additionally, a cluster-name option is introduced for easier demarcation and node removal from a cluster. The Community Edition is now limited to a maximum of 32 nodes, encouraging users to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition when needed.

Aerospike has introduced its Telemetry feature, an opt-out reporting service that collects anonymized performance statistics data from users of the open source Community Edition. The initial findings show Ubuntu Linux as the most popular distro for running Aerospike, followed by CentOS and Amazon Linux AMI. In terms of computational platforms, virtual machines (VMs) outnumber physical hardware nodes by a ratio of 3:1, with Amazon AWS being the majority provider. The Telemetry feature aims to provide insights into how the software is used and improve its performance for users.

In 2014, Aerospike's CTO Brian Bulkowski was inspired by Alistair Croll's talk on cohort analysis and realized that enterprise software is different from consumer apps. He proposed instrumenting the Aerospike database to collect data on its performance and features causing roadblocks for developers. Despite initial fears of users rejecting a database that reports on use, Bulkowski convinced Aerospike to implement this functionality in their open-source Community Edition. The company has since released Telemetry, an anonymized performance statistics data collection service, which allows them to understand how their software is being used and improve it accordingly. Initial results show that the most popular Linux distro for running Aerospike is Ubuntu, followed by CentOS, while virtual machines outnumber physical hardware nodes by 3:1. The data also reveals that Amazon AWS is the leading virtualization provider, with Google GCE in second place.