November 2022 Summaries

Aerospike has released its Database 6.2, which now supports 64-bit ARM processors and is compatible with the latest Neoverse N1 microarchitecture, such as AWS Graviton2 processors. This update provides a better cost-performance ratio. The Aerospike Lab tool, Aerolab, also supports the new M1 Mac processor. However, there have been some breaking changes in Server 6.2, including the removal of support for Debian 9 and the ARM64 version no longer supporting LuaJit. Additionally, Aerospike has released several tools and clients, including a major overhaul of its REST Gateway 2.0 client, as well as new versions of its Java, C#, Python, Go, Node.js, C, and Ruby clients.

### Summary` We have seen that with little effort we can easily spin up a deployment with local disks for block storage, combined with filesystem storage. We also confirmed the Pods were being scheduled automatically to the correct nodes. We also learned that by using Kubernetes taints, we could effectively reserve nodes for specific usage. Additionally, this guide provided an overview of how Aerospike's All-Flash mode can be used in a Kubernetes environment, and demonstrated the use of side-by-side block and filesystem requests.

Aerospike is participating in AWS re:Invent 2022 with a crew of executives, sales, and technical professionals to learn about the latest AWS Cloud innovations and meet customers, prospects, and partners. The company's CEO Subbu Iyer will be presenting a breakout session on building real-time applications using AWS Graviton. Aerospike is also hosting a booth at the event with various activities such as product demos, partner solutions showcase, raffles, and prizes. Live streaming interviews featuring Subbu are scheduled for Tuesday on Silicon Angle's theCube and AWS On Air. The event will be available online for free, with Aerospike's session being available on-demand post re:Invent.

In this blog series, Vova Kyrychenko discusses how to select the right database architecture by focusing on design principles of good architecture that can be scaled with an optimal cost/benefit ratio. Key factors to consider when choosing a tech stack include budget, DevOps expertise, data load, and performance requirements. It is crucial to extensively test and experiment with database architecture to find an optimal solution. The article also reviews various types of infrastructure services such as Aerospike Cloud, Hardware on-premise/co-location, Virtual Private Server (VPS), Cloud VPS, Cloud-managed software, and Cloud-native service. It emphasizes the importance of investing in engineering over hardware and understanding shared economy to assess service billing for business growth. The author suggests hiring consultants and engineers with experience developing high-load solutions as an ultimate investment that can help profits grow faster than infrastructure bills.

This article discusses the design principles of good architecture, the importance of choosing a tech stack that balances budget, DevOps expertise, data load, and performance requirements, and the need for flexible optimization options to configure the system to changing needs. It also reviews various infrastructure services such as Aerospike Cloud, hardware on-premise/co-location, hardware on the cloud, virtual private server (VPS), cloud VPS, and cloud-managed software, highlighting their pros and cons. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding shared economy, assessing service billing for business growth, prioritizing investing in engineering over hardware, and hiring experienced consultants and engineers to develop high-load solutions. It encourages readers not to blindly rely on clouds and instead manage databases more efficiently themselves, which can lead to faster growth potential and higher profits.

Designing a high-load database architecture can be challenging, and organizations often make common mistakes that lead to infrastructure cost mismanagement. These include lack of experience with high-load projects, suboptimal technology stacks, relying too much on the cloud, and falling into the "free money trap." To avoid these pitfalls, companies should invest in managed service providers or self-serve solutions paired with DevOps expertise for better performance optimization and cost savings. Additionally, startups should consider infrastructure credit as real money and spend it carefully to prepare for growth and increased operational costs.

Aerospike Database 6.2 is now generally available and supports deployment on AWS Graviton2 processors. This release maintains the best cost-performance ratio in its field, making it suitable for mission-critical applications at any scale. The database runs on ARMv8.2-A instruction set compatible hardware and x86-64-v2 microarchitecture level processors. Aerospike server 6.2 also supports containers on ARM64 processors, such as Apple M1 MacBook Pro laptops. Additionally, native clients for arm64 macOS are available or will be released shortly after the server release. The latest tools release includes AeroLab, a developer preview tool for setting up environments and spinning up development environments.

Aerospike Database 6.2 is now generally available, allowing deployment on AWS Graviton2 processors, significantly reducing the total cost of ownership and maintaining its best cost-performance ratio in the field. The new release enables Aerospike server to run on ARMv8.2-A instruction sets and existing x86-64-v2 microarchitecture level processors. A new package naming convention has been introduced for non-x86_64 architectures, requiring adjustments to CI/CD scripts. Developers can now deploy Aerospike in their environments regardless of hardware or operating system, using Docker or native clients for ARM64 macOS. The Aerospike Tools 8.0.0 release includes a native macOS tools package for Apple M1/M2 hardware and a standalone package, with AQL release 8.0.0 separating data browsing from administration.

In the quest for cost-efficient database infrastructure, organizations often fall prey to common mistakes such as lack of experience, suboptimal technology stacks, over-reliance on cloud services, and ignoring infrastructure costs, which can lead to costly surprises down the line. Engineers without high-load/big-data experience may struggle to design scalable systems, while relying too heavily on managed services can hinder long-term cost savings. A suboptimal technology stack can result in higher operational costs as data volumes increase, whereas self-serve solutions paired with DevOps expertise can offer faster data processing speeds and substantial cost savings. Relying on cloud services for heavy lifting can be beneficial at first but may become expensive when scaling, while ignoring infrastructure costs can lead to a "free-money trap" where startups underestimate the true cost of their operations as they grow. By understanding these pitfalls and taking a proactive approach to database architecture design, organizations can avoid costly mistakes and ensure a more efficient and scalable infrastructure.

The Aerospike REST Gateway 2.0 provides a well-known interface to the Aerospike Database and offers various architectural solutions for applications that don't require a full-fledged Aerospike client integration. The new version includes significant updates, such as support for Aerospike server 6.0 and server 6.1 features, complete retooling of the Operations API, and added query capabilities like query by partition and response pagination. Additionally, the REST Gateway 2.0 introduces batch write, batch delete, and batch UDF support, allowing for more efficient data operations, as well as improved metrics and documentation. The new version's Operations V2 marks a significant redesign of the API with a focus on ease of use and robustness, supporting list, map, bit, and HLL operations, among others.

Aerospike Database 6 is now available on AWS Graviton, significantly reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for real-time applications. The combined solution offers companies a way to save while continuing to innovate during uncertain economic times. Deploying Aerospike on AWS Graviton-based instances further reduces TCO and carbon footprint of solutions. In benchmark tests, the Aerospike Database processed 25 million transactions per second on Graviton instances versus 21.1 million transactions per second on equivalent x86_64 instances (an 18% improvement). The Graviton deployment was 27% less costly than the x86_64 one. Running Aerospike on Graviton significantly reduced carbon emissions, estimated by AWS to be a 49% improvement per TPS, when running a read-only workload at 99% sub-millisecond latencies.

Aerospike Database version 6.2 is now available on AWS Graviton, providing a dramatic reduction in infrastructure costs for real-time applications, while continuing to innovate during uncertain economic times. The solution offers companies a way to save energy and reduce their carbon footprint, with joint customers of AWS and Aerospike experiencing an order of magnitude lower total cost of ownership compared to other real-time solutions. Deploying Aerospike on Graviton-based instances further reduces the TCO and carbon footprint of solutions, resulting in improved performance and sustainability. The partnership between Aerospike and AWS provides a natural fit for building next-generation services with global reach at reduced cost and increased performance.

MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a widely used messaging protocol ideal for communicating with small remote devices with limited power and network bandwidth, commonly used in various industries such as automotive, manufacturing, telecommunications, and oil and gas. Aerospike is a high-performance distributed database well-suited for real-time transactional processing, providing high throughput, low latency, scalability, and low cost. The article describes an example of how to achieve end-to-end data flow between a small device and Aerospike using MQTT, allowing the approach to be scaled to accommodate thousands of devices and storing data over a period of years if necessary. The example simulates IoT sensor data generation and tracks its publication to an MQTT Broker, subscription to receive updates via push notifications, serialization to Aerospike database using the Community Time Series Client, and querying the stored data from Aerospike. The demonstration showcases how Aerospike can be used to store industrial time series data made available by the MQTT ecosystem, streamlining storage and retrieval of millions of data points per second if required.

Mismanagement of database infrastructure costs can lead to significant financial losses for tech companies. In this article, we discuss how to optimize these costs by sharing real-life examples from a company that faced surging operational costs and needed urgent infrastructure revamping. The solution involved redesigning the cloud architecture, real-time infrastructure, and data pipelines, which led to a significant reduction in yearly database infrastructure costs. Key takeaways include considering cost implications when scaling and ensuring efficient resource provisioning by replacing pricy managed services with more cost-effective self-service tools.

Modern tech products rely heavily on efficient collection and analysis of big data, which is stored, processed, and analyzed through database infrastructure. Poorly managed infrastructure can quickly become cost-prohibitive, eroding a business's profitability. A company faced a $72,000 overnight bill due to misconfigured Google Cloud Platform setup, highlighting the importance of including database infrastructure costs in unit economics. To optimize costs, companies must review their architecture and consider optimization strategies such as replacing expensive cloud managed services with self-service tools, re-engineering for real-time access, and re-designing data pipelines to reduce redundancy. By taking these steps, businesses can significantly reduce their database infrastructure costs and allocate resources more effectively.

Veteran's Day is a time to express gratitude towards those who have dedicated their lives to defending our nation's independence and freedoms. The author shares his experience of serving in the Navy and how it provided him with personal gratification from being of service to others. He emphasizes the importance of supporting veterans as they transition back into civilian life, highlighting Aerospike's commitment to providing opportunities and support for them. The author encourages everyone to recognize the sacrifices made by our brave veterans.

The company Aerospike has won or been a finalist for eight industry awards this year, including the Ventana Digital Awards and the IoT Evolution Edge Computing Excellence Award. They have also been recognized as one of CRN's The 10 Coolest Big Data Tools of 2022 and made it onto the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-growing Private Companies in the Pacific Region. These accolades reflect the support of their customers and employees, who contribute to Aerospike's success.

Aerospike, a Platinum sponsor at re:Invent, has built both a technical partnership with AWS and a vertical go-to-market approach. Over 40% of Aerospike's customers already run on AWS in Ad Tech, Real Money Gaming, and Financial Services industries. Deployment patterns of Aerospike on AWS vary across these sectors, but all rely on the performance and scalability provided by AWS services. The Aerospike database on AWS helps customers avoid deployment complexity while providing a platform that accelerates application development.

Aerospike has built a technical partnership with AWS and developed a vertical go-to-market approach with them, leveraging their commonalities to deploy Aerospike in Ad Tech, Real Money Gaming, and Financial Services on AWS. In Ad Tech, Aerospike powers features such as profile stores, dynamic creative optimization, and bidding engines for organizations like Sony and Dream11. In Real Money Gaming, Aerospike enables real-time interaction and exchange of data with services like CDN, SNS, Elastic Load Balancing, and Autoscaling to support big players like DraftKings and Playtika. In Financial Services, Aerospike delivers sub-millisecond latency solutions using various EC2 instance types deployed within isolated VPC environments in multiple regions for institutions like the EU Open Banking initiative. Aerospike offers deployment options such as on-prem, hybrid deployments, and multi-region cloud deployments to fit customers' needs, leveraging AWS resources to build robust and scalable solutions with minimized cost and complexity.

Aerospike has announced an Early Availability Program for its new database-as-a-service (DBaaS), Aerospike Cloud, with commercial availability planned for early next year. The service is designed to provide data teams of any size easy access to real-time cloud capabilities using the multi-model Aerospike Database 6 and the Aerospike Real-time Data Platform. Aerospike Cloud is built on proven AWS infrastructure and offers an on-demand, pay-as-you-go, fully elastic service for developers and data architects to build real-time applications in minutes. The company aims to help users scale their applications without the need for rethinking or rearchitecting data pipelines. Aerospike Cloud is built with reliability and security in mind, leveraging over three years of experience running Aerospike Cloud Managed Service on AWS.