September 2020 Summaries

Aerospike has released version 5.2 of its database, which includes enhancements to XDR (Cross-Datacenter Replication) and Predicate Filters. The new version offers improved shipping of modified bins, expanded bin shipping policy options, the ability to ship records to a different namespace, and an XDR Proxy for handling situations where IP addresses are not reachable between clusters. Additionally, Aerospike 5.2 introduces redesigned filters based on Expressions, which support all data type operations and provide more convenient syntax compared to previous RPN-based predicate expressions.

Aerospike has released version 5.2, which includes several key features and enhancements. The latest release improves shipping of modified bins, allowing for more fine-grained control over which data is shipped between clusters. This feature, along with others like ship to a different namespace and XDR proxy, enables more flexible and secure replication and distribution of data across clusters. Additionally, the new filter API based on Aerospike Expressions provides improved filtering capabilities, including support for all data type operations and expanded filtering operations on metadata. Other notable updates include features such as stay-quiesced service-context configuration parameter and ignore-migrate-fill-delay namespace-context configuration parameter.

The financial services industry (FinServ) is undergoing significant changes due to increasing customer expectations, systemic risk, market pressures, and regulatory forces. Financial institutions are leveraging FinTech software to adapt to this complex business environment and compete with startups in various areas such as payment processing and database management. One of the key innovations in FinServ is the use of NoSQL databases, which offer advantages over traditional SQL databases, including non-relational, cluster-friendly design, ability to handle heterogeneous data volumes, and strong consistency features. Aerospike, a leading player in this space, has continued its innovation spree with features like strong consistency and compression, making it an ideal choice for financial institutions that demand complete accuracy without losing speed or performance. NoSQL databases are expected to play a significant role in real-time data analytics, fraud, and risk management within the FinServ industry.

The text discusses the importance of securing Aerospike clusters against potential hacking attempts. It highlights that all software has vulnerabilities and provides recommendations for securing Aerospike ports and User-Defined Functions (UDFs). For securing Aerospike ports, it advises limiting access to open ports only to applications and monitoring systems, while for UDFs, it suggests migrating them to native operations when possible and disabling them if not in use. It also recommends keeping track of new developer features and enabling security measures for those who make use of UDFs.

The article discusses the evolution of databases from traditional relational databases (RDBMS) to newer technologies like object-oriented databases, cloud databases, and NoSQL databases. It highlights that different types of databases have their own strengths and weaknesses, with RDBMS being known for its accuracy, easy accessibility, flexibility, and strong security while falling short in scalability. On the other hand, NoSQL databases provide a mechanism for accessing, storing, and retrieving data not modeled in tabular relations like an RDBMS, offering high scalability, flexible structures, and better suited for big data and IoT usage. The article also acknowledges that while NoSQL databases have their own challenges such as lack of standardization and limited community support, these issues are currently being addressed, indicating the potential growth and development of this technology in the future.

The world of Financial Services has embraced digital transformation, with a growing emphasis on data management due to increased online activity and data generation. Aerospike's strategy team has partnered with Medici.com to analyze trends, market conditions, and technical factors affecting the financial services industry. They will publish articles and videos discussing next-gen NoSQL databases, their use cases in Financial Services, modern instant payment settlements, financial crime detection and fraud management, digital banking needs for a modern data platform, and insights from MEDICI's white paper on data platforms in Financial Services. The goal is to help decision-makers make informed choices about technology solutions that meet their specific needs.

The Aerospike Standup Vol. 13 newsletter provides updates on the Aerospike Database and related products, as well as community questions, documentation, releases, and events. Key points include articles on accelerating data pipelines with Aerospike, monitoring stack improvements, and optimizing serialized or compressed objects. Release notes cover updates for Connect for Spark, Go Client, and removed Zabbix and Graphite monitoring guides from the operations manual. Upcoming events include a virtual event where Aerospike is a Gold Sponsor with two speaking slots.

Aerospike Standup is a newsletter written by developers for developers that covers various topics related to the Aerospike Database and its ecosystem. The newsletter includes articles, questions from the community, documentation updates, and upcoming events. It also features contributions from Aerospike's engineering team members such as Joe Martin, Kiran Matty, Reuven Kaswin, and Micah Carrick, who share their expertise on various aspects of the platform including data pipelines, security, and monitoring stack. The newsletter is designed to be informative and engaging for developers and enthusiasts interested in learning more about Aerospike and its capabilities.

The Aerospike Monitoring Stack (AMS) has evolved over the years due to changes in cloud computing and containerization. Previously, monitoring tools such as Aerospike Management Console (AMC), third-party plugins like Datadog and Telegraf, and community-based ones like asprom were used. However, with growing adoption of Prometheus and Grafana, the focus has shifted towards a stack based on these two technologies. The Aerospike Prometheus exporter is now available with features such as HTTP basic auth, HTTPS support, allowlist/blocklist for metrics, latency optimization, connection reuse, and error retries. Meanwhile, AMC has been turned over to the community for further development and support. Future plans include introducing operator APIs for managing complex tasks like rolling upgrades in a simple-to-automate manner.

The Aerospike Database and Aerospike Connect product line aim to accelerate data pipelines by addressing various challenges faced by Data Scientists, Infrastructure Engineers, Developers, and Business Leaders. These include improving AI/ML model training times, supporting high throughput/low latency pipelines on-prem and in the cloud, enabling applications at scale, and increasing ROI on legacy investments. Aerospike Connect offers connectors for Spark, Kafka, JMS, and Pulsar to create an ecosystem around the Aerospike enterprise database. The product line helps bridge mainframe systems with modern services based on newer technologies such as Spark, Kafka, AI/ML frameworks, etc., enabling the creation of advanced applications related to mobile payments, IoT, 5G, and more.

Aerospike has developed the Aerospike Connect product line to address challenges faced by data scientists, infrastructure engineers, developers, and business leaders by enhancing the capabilities of its enterprise database. This product line includes connectors for Spark, Kafka, JMS, and a beta version for Pulsar, facilitating integration with AI/ML systems and legacy enterprise systems to improve data processing and application scalability. The connectors optimize performance by allowing high-throughput, low-latency data pipelines and enabling seamless data flow across modern and legacy systems. For instance, Aerospike Connect for Spark allows parallel processing of large data volumes, reducing ML model training times and eliminating the need to duplicate vast datasets, thus lowering costs and complying with governance requirements. These solutions are particularly beneficial for industries such as financial services and telecom, where they support applications like mobile payments and IoT. Aerospike's enhancements aim to maximize ROI on existing infrastructure while providing a foundation for cutting-edge applications, as demonstrated by significant performance improvements and cost savings reported by customers.

The 2020 Kafka User Summit, held online August 24-25, attracted over 30,000 participants interested in learning the latest about stream processing and managing data streams. With an increasing amount of daily life moving online, understanding concepts like "stream processing" is crucial for organizations to react to changing business conditions in real-time. The summit covered topics such as technical and industry trends fueling Kafka's growth, future-ready architectural changes, and various use cases across industries. Aerospike, a company focused on delivering maximum value from vast amounts of data at the edge, cloud, and core, presented a session on distributed data storage and streaming for real-time decision making using Kafka, Spark, and Aerospike. The company also highlighted its Kafka connectors and their suitability for various use cases in enterprises.

Companies must build a data strategy to manage extreme growth and scale effectively. PayPal's experience shows that managing real-time data is crucial for success, with data growing at 30% annually. To handle this growth, companies should invest in various databases, including relational and non-relational ones. The data layer plays a critical role in scaling businesses, as it manages large volumes of data and workloads that require real-time access or longer processing times. Scaling systems is both an art and a science, requiring a deep understanding of how services interact with each other and identifying the impact of failures on other areas. The economics of new memory and storage technology have changed the game, but companies must still use the right technology stack to optimize their workloads. Key dimensions of scale include in-memory or caching, memory first, and hybrid approaches. Understanding these dimensions helps organizations avoid bottlenecks and optimize hardware for specific workloads. To manage 30% data growth yearly with consistency and performance, companies should adopt a slow and steady approach to incremental change while staying agile. For global distributed applications, the database must be able to survive entire site failures and provide high performance and availability at scale.

The Aerospike Standup newsletter for developers provides updates on blog posts, community questions, documentation, releases, and events from the Aerospike team. Upcoming content includes further updates to v5.1, Prometheus Exporter, Kafka Connector, an article about XDR, and a discussion on high availability vs. strong consistency. The newsletter will be shared every other week, with subscriptions available via email. Community questions addressed include adding namespaces in new nodes' configs when adding a node to a cluster and primary indexes being lost for Aerospike containers after relaunching. Release notes from August 17th to 24th are provided, along with details on upcoming events such as CeFPro Fraud & Financial Crime Europe 2020 Virtual EMEA Event and a virtual event where Aerospike is a Gold Sponsor.

Aerospike's Standup newsletter has been launched, providing developers with a centralized hub for Aerospike-related content, including blog posts, community questions, documentation, releases, and events. Developers can submit their questions to the community, which are then addressed by the Aerospike team in future newsletters. The upcoming events include CeFPro Fraud & Financial Crime Europe 2020 and Big Data London Virtual Event, where Aerospike will participate as a sponsor. Additionally, the Aerospike Go client has been updated with new releases on August 17, 18, and 19.