November 2019 Summaries

YugabyteDB 2.0.6 has been released, bringing almost 30 new enhancements and bug fixes, including improvements in YSQL API, catalog manager, and system performance. The database is built on a scalable and fault-tolerant design inspired by Google Spanner and offers features such as transparent read restarts, row-level security, and support for PostgreSQL wire compatibility. Additionally, YugabyteDB has made progress in its documentation, blogs, tutorials, and videos, with new content available on topics like distributed SQL, change data capture, and database administration. The company is also hiring software engineers, developer advocates, and senior technical writers to join its team of domain experts from leading software companies.

Plume`, a company that provides smart home services to ISPs, uses `YugabyteDB` as its database management system. On November 12, 2019, an entire availability zone in the eu-central-1 region of AWS went down, causing an outage for Plume's operations. The outage occurred at 12:07am PST, and despite the AWS status page not being updated until 12:16am PST, `YugabyteDB`'s monitoring system alerted Plume's operations team before that. The database clusters were able to recover automatically once the AZ failure was fixed by AWS, with some instances taking longer due to issues with EBS volumes. After a manual intervention to mount the disk on one of the affected nodes and decommissioning another node that was not reachable via SSH, all alerts were resolved, and Plume's services were confirmed to be running smoothly without any data loss or application impact. The outage highlighted how `YugabyteDB` can handle zone outages with automatic failover and replication across multiple availability zones.

YugabyteDB is a distributed SQL database that uses a tiered compaction strategy to minimize disk write (IO) amplification. The database's testing process involves various categories of tests, including unit tests, end-to-end functional tests, and performance tests, which are run on multiple compilers and build targets. YugabyteDB does not require an external load balancer for users who use the YCQL API, but it is recommended for those using the YSQL API. The database has recently released new documentation, blogs, tutorials, and videos, including a design guide for change data capture and two-data-center architecture, as well as a recap of this year's Distributed SQL Summit. YugabyteDB is continuously improving its testing and delivery pipeline to ensure fast development while maintaining reliability, robustness, and performance.

YugabyteDB has released version 2.0.5, which includes over 40 new enhancements and bug fixes across its YSQL and YCQL APIs, as well as improvements in system reliability and security features such as encryption at rest and write throttling. The release also adds support for new platforms, including AWS instances with encryption-enabled storage, and introduces various documentation updates and new resources for developers. Additionally, the company is hiring and invites individuals to join its team of domain experts from leading software companies.

YugabyteDB is now available as a self-managed database service on Crossplane, the open-source multicloud control plane, offering users a free in-cluster alternative to proprietary databases like Google Cloud SQL, Amazon RDS Aurora, or Azure SQL DB. This joint solution simplifies multicloud application management by providing a single control plane for provisioning and managing multiple YugabyteDB clusters across different cloud providers, such as Google Kubernetes Engine, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, and Azure Kubernetes Service. With Crossplane, users can automate deployment practices, including specifying which cloud provider and region should run an application or database, depending on its usage. The partnership between Upbound and Yugabyte advances the future of multicloud by offering more choice and control for companies deploying ever-larger numbers of Kubernetes clusters in a multi-vendor approach to cloud infrastructure services.

YugabyteDB is actively engaging with its community through regular updates, discussing various topics such as TTL's effect on performance, key rotation for encryption at rest, and recovery of failed nodes in clusters. The database also supports microsecond timestamps in its YSQL API. Additionally, the YugabyteDB documentation has been updated with new blogs, tutorials, and videos covering topics like partial indexes, scaling to high insert rates, and working with PostgreSQL data types. Upcoming events include meetups, webinars, and conferences such as KubeCon and AWS re:Invent. The database is designed for cloud-native applications and offers a quickstart process for getting started locally on laptops.