A new serverless analytics solution controls cloud database data without the need for ETL while only paying for what is used.
A new release of MariaDB SkySQL, a second generation cloud database service, brings new innovation that lets organisations better manage their cloud database costs.
SkySQL now enables autoscaling which scales resources when demand surges and back down when demand normalises to save costs. SkySQL also introduces serverless analytics to uncover insights on all current data without the need for ETL and all while paying for only what is used.
Cloud database services offered by public cloud vendors were the first to bring open source databases, such as MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL, to the cloud over a decade ago. These first generation cloud databases emphasised convenience and price, however, today’s world requires extraordinary resilience, elasticity and performance.
Accelerated by the pandemic, at an unprecedented level, people have come to expect more from the services and applications they rely on every day. Second generation cloud database services combine deep database expertise and cloud-native technology to run across clouds and achieve unstoppable performance.
MariaDB, SkySQL enables autoscaling of both compute and storage in response to changes in demand. Rules specify when autoscaling is triggered, for example when CPU utilization is above 75% over all replicas sustained for 30 minutes, then a new replica or node will be added to handle the increase. Similarly, when CPU utilisation is less than 50 per cent over all replicas for an hour, nodes or a replica is removed. Users always specify the top and bottom threshold so there are never any cost surprises.
When paired with Xpand, MariaDB’s distributed SQL database, autoscaling means never having to worry about unexpected spikes in demand. Double, triple or quadruple the amount of users initially expected? No problem. Xpand on SkySQL with autoscale turned on will automatically add nodes to handle the increase in demand. Once demand is reduced, SkySQL will reduce nodes so you only pay for the resources needed.
No ETL is required to do analytics. SkySQL enables operational analytics on active transactional data as well as external data sources using a serverless analytics layer powered by Apache Spark SQL. This approach removes any inconsistencies between an analytical view and a transactional view. Only pay for the CPU consumed for analytics without any need to provision compute.
Data scientists also have access to an Apache Zeppelin notebook. The notebook is pre-loaded with examples that demonstrate ways to run analytics on data stored in SkySQL. It can also be used to discover database schemas, running queries on data stored in Amazon S3 and federating queries to join data across SkySQL databases and S3 object storage.
The new release of SkySQL is now generally available (GA) on AWS and Google Cloud, and includes updated MariaDB product versions: Xpand 6.1.1, Enterprise Server 10.6.12 and ColumnStore 6.3.1.
